On Tuesday, March 05, 2013 07:41:23 PM Michael Hall wrote: > On 03/05/2013 06:49 PM, Allison Randal wrote: > > There were a few things that concerned me in today's session on cadence > > of rolling releases: > > > > http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-1303/meeting/21683/community-1303-rolling-rel > > ease/ > > > > But, the biggest was at the very end when System76 said that two years > > is too long between releases for their customers, but that they were > > willing to at least *try* the new rolling releases. The reply was that > > the rolling releases weren't expected to be stable enough to deliver to > > customers. This surprised me, since "stability" is exactly the purpose > > of rolling releases. > > > > If the "rolling releases" really aren't intended for end-users, then we > > should just drop the fiction, say the change is from a 6-month cadence > > to a 2-year cadence, and be done with it. > > > > Yes, it has all the problems we've come to know-and-hate with stale > > applications. So, either allow SRU exceptions for more applications like > > we do for Firefox, or start really supporting Backports for the LTS. > > > > It's a waste of everyone's time and effort to rework the whole project > > around talk of "rolling releases" when it's really just the same old > > development release on a slower schedule. (Remember how we used to call > > monthly images alphas and betas? That was ages ago, like 4 whole months.) > > > > Allison > > I think different segments of the community have different ideas of what > "stable" means: > > Distro devs & power users: "stable" == "things don't break" > > App devs, OEMS, NTEU: "stable" == "things don't change" > > > I think what we're going for in a rolling release is a release where > things change, but don't break. While an LTS release is one where > things neither change nor break.
Things are going to break. I think the goal is for the development release (AKA rolling) to be stable enough that breakage is rare and not beyond the ability of advanced users to recover their systems. I don't think it's a release in any normal sense of the word. We also break things in stable releases sometimes too, but we attempt to provide a very low risk of this and a no regressions policy that causes any regressions post-release to be a very high priority to address. Both are going to change, it's a matter of what kinds of change are appropriate to be applied with what level of risk. Scott K -- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
