Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo-sources - should we stable?

[Mike Pagano]

On Friday, January 02, 2015 03:30:40 PM Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 3:11 PM, Ian Stakenvicius <axs@g.o> wrote:
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> > On 02/01/15 02:57 PM, Mike Pagano wrote:
> >> I understand your point. Maybe waiting a few days to auto stable
> >> makes sense, because less than 7 days later, a new version with
> >> bug/security fixes is released.
> >>
> >> Isn't our current rate of stabilization "selling" a promise of
> >> stability we can't stand behind?
> >>
> >> Mike
> >
> > Well to be perfectly honest, the current-stable 3.16 and 3.17 kernels
> > for me at least have some rather unfortunate regressions over 3.15 and
> > previous, so even with the stabilization we're achieving now I don't
> > think we're living up to our "promise of stability" :)
>
> As a btrfs user I went through quite a bit of pain in the whole
> 3.15-17 series, but I that probably isn't a typical mainstream user
> experience.  This sort of thing was why I did suggest targeting
> longterm.  When the next longterm is announced then we could
> transition to it at our leisure (ie with plenty of testing while
> following point releases quickly on the previous longterm).
>
> So, moving between longterm branches would have a more typical Gentoo
> QA process.  However, between point releases within a branch we would
> auto-stable releases, since it is unlikely that our own QA process is
> going to add any real value beyond what upstream already does.
>
> We also need to keep in mind just what our "promise of stability" even
> means.  We're not a release-based distro, and we're NEVER going to
> offer an experience like RHEL or Debian Stable where the entirety of
> the package base is pinned and tested and we only do security
> backports.  The kernel stable branches probably represent a lot more
> stability than we have almost anywhere else in the distro anyway.

We have had a lot of stable kernels with a not-so-stable btrfs.  That's a 
whole conversation in itself.  There are pieces of the kernel that are in a, 
shall we say, less stable state than others.

-- 
Mike Pagano
Gentoo Developer - Kernel Project
Team Lead - Gentoo Sources
E-Mail     : mpagano@g.o
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