Re: [gentoo-dev] avoiding urgent stabilizations

[Roy Bamford]

On 2011.02.07 20:50, Markos Chandras wrote:
[snip]

> My suggestion, as I said to fosdem, is to freeze, or take a
> snapshot if you like, of the current tree, stabilize what you need to
> stabilize, test the whole tree ( at least compile wise ) for a couple
> of weeks and then replace the existing stable tree. Of course this
> requires automated script testing, hardware facilities etc etc that
> we don't have so claiming that stable tree is "stable" is quite
> wrong.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
>

Markos,

This is exactly what releng used to do for installer CDs.  This was 
last used for 2008.0 CD/DVD. A snapshot of the stable tree was taken in 
February 200.8 and the release hit the mirrors in September.

The seven month test/fix/retest that it took meant that the CD would 
not boot on new hardware as the kernel lacked drivers.

You will find similar lags when releng used this approach for other 
earlier releases.

We would need to move to a release cycle like the kernel. Calling a 
feature freeze at the start of the test cycle. As we can't everything, 
we might as well distribute binaries of what was tested - just as 
releng used to do. 

To me thats not Gentoo as we would loose the rolling updates.
 
There are degrees of stable.  I believe most Gentoo users 
realise this fairly early on and stick with Gentoo because they like 
the balance it strikes between Debian stable and bleeding edge.
There is a price to pay for being more up to date and it a trade off 
Gentoo users are aware off. Of course, that does not prevent them 
bringing breakages to our attention. 

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
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