Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 19, reloaded (again)

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Tue, 2004-08-10 at 09:26, Corey Shields wrote:
> There is no release for this at all..  We can use the same release cd's that
> are currently available.

I still don't see the advantage of 2 release cycles.  I honestly feel
like our current quarterly release cycles are a bit ambitious.  Adding
any other release cycles into this mix would simply be overwhelming for
our staff.

> > So the idea is to create exactly *one* stable tree?  How is this any
> > different than just doing better with our current tree?  Honestly, from
> > what I've heard from our users, they want package stability (as in
> > freeze) much more than anything else.  This is *exactly* why I recommend
> > tying the "stable" trees with the releases.  I'm not sure I can
> > understand how doing anything else really gives us anything other than
> > adding more workload for the simple fact of adding workload.  Having a
> > "stable" tree that still moves, and only providing a single "stable"
> > tree doesn't seem to be an improvement from what we have at all.
>
> when we say "stable" we are talking about the package freeze you mention.
> Some people want daily updates of stuff to be on the bleeding edge.  This is
> one of the biggest selling points of Gentoo, and should remain that way.
> This project aims at making a tree (or however it is implemented) that does
> not change as often.  For example, I don't need every little gcc and
> man-pages update on my production system.  This would provide some stability
> to the tree.  I guess that "stable" is a bad term here as it is easily
> confused for system stability.

I guess when I hear stable, I think *UN*changing... not "changing less
often".  Adding "some" stability is not what our users are asking for
from us.  They are asking for a "stable" tree.  A single tree cannot
provide this.  Having a "bleeding" and a "stable" tree cannot provide
this.  This is why I have always been pushing the idea of having a
"release" tree which coincides with the release media.  You then have a
complete set of "stable" packages, both in the form of the release tree,
and also in the form of pre-compiled binary GRP packages.  It also would
open up the possibility of creating binary-only update packages if we so
desired to in the future.  Installing from a Gentoo 2019.2 CD would then
*always* produce an *identical* install, just as it does with any other
distribution, and just like our users are requesting.  This does not
change the "gentoo-portage" module, which would be the equivalent of
something like freebsd's or slackware's -current branches.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering QA Manager/Games Developer
Gentoo Linux

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