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On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 04:43:25PM -0400, Dylan Carlson wrote: |
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> On Tuesday 20 July 2004 9:14 am, Kurt Lieber wrote: |
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> > A while back, I wrote GLEP 19[1] based on some of the needs of the |
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> > gentoo-server project. For various reasons, the GLEP was tabled at the |
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> > time and never went anywhere. A number of folks have expressed an |
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> > interest in revitalizing this GLEP, so I'd like to start a new |
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> > discussion about implementing it. There was a couple of previous |
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> > threads on this GLEP back when it was first introduced that I'll |
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> > include[2] for your reference. |
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> |
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> Therefore I believe another possible solution is to change the way we use |
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> profiles (both in practice and in QA policy): |
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> |
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> Implications: |
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> |
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> 4/ we will need to have a policy about how long we'll support a profile, |
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> and a procedure for end-of-lifing profiles. (probably don't want to |
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> support a single profile for more than 2 years) |
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We will also need to persuade every dev to support this. Often bug fixes are |
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available from upstream only in a new version of a package, and are mixed in |
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with a many other improvements. Extracting the bug fix _only_ and |
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backporting this fix to an old version is at best time consuming, often |
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difficult, and occasionally impossible. |
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|
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I think one of the reasons that Gentoo as stable as it is, despite the speed |
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at which it changes, is that we limit ourselves to supporting _only_ what |
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the upstream author supports. Doing anything else requires lots of manpower. |
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Either you employ hundreds of developers like RedHat, or you end up with a |
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very stable but very slow moving distribution like Debian. I don't want |
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Gentoo to be either. |
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Backporting fixes to out-of-date software that I no longer use for the |
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benefit of people I don't even know exist is distinctly unglamourous and |
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doesn't scratch any of my Open Source itches. You really need to persuade |
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developers that "Enterprise (slow-moving) Gentoo" is a good idea before |
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discussing implementation details. |
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|
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-- |
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Tom |
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|
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-- |
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