Re: [gentoo-dev] more up to date minimal install cd

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Mon, 2007-03-05 at 17:49 +0100, Marijn Schouten (hkBst) wrote:
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> Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > I have no plans on releasing *any* kind of nightly *anything* so
> > long as Release Engineering still gets minimal testing from only a
> > *tiny* subset of our developer pool when we are basically *begging* for
> > it.
>
> I've been wondering about why I don't think I've ever seen an announcement
> of a release candidate on DistroWatch for example.

Well, the fact that we don't *have* release candidates probably plays
something into it.  ;]

> > With the current participation level, I just don't see it as possible.
> > Remember, we switched from quarterly to bi-annual releases for a reason.
> > We simply didn't have the man power, CPU power, nor time to do vigorous
> > enough testing in the much more shortened time frame.  I'm going to be
> > asking for Release Testers again once I return, and if last year's turn
> > out was any indicator (50+ people volunteering, about 5 actually helping
> > *at all*), the chances of a project such as nightly builds ever taking
> > off is well beyond our means at this time.
>
> Well, I hope this year's turn out will be better, cause I'm planning on using 2007.0 as a starting
> point. I will continue to test 2007.0 to see if at least it boots on my hardware :)
>
> Patrick(DrEeevil) has kindly offered use of his servers at http://gentooexperimental.org/ and has
> expressed interest in stage3's as have some other people earlier in this thread. My plan is to start
> off with amd64 install cd only to keep work load down. This will include an amd64 stage3. Probably
> there will be stage3's for x86 and maybe another architecture, I think Patrick mentioned PPC, unless
> they turn out to be too much trouble. I'm hoping to do something between weekly and monthly releases.

Do *not* make them even *appear* to be anything related to Release
Engineering.  We don't want to support anything more than we currently
do.

What does this mean?

It means that if you insist on doing your own version of some kind of
nightly/weekly/monthly/etc that you're entirely on your own.  Like I
have said before, Release Engineering currently does weekly stage builds
on several architectures (Alpha/AMD64/PPC/x86) for QA purposes.  We
simply don't release those stages because we have exactly 0 intentions
on ever supporting them.

> It would be great if I could have at least one other person to do this with me and maybe some
> release engineering support for when I have a silly question.

Silly question, sure.  However, my answer to you is going to be "use the
same scripts Release Engineering does" on this.  As I said, we have
automated stages being built, we just don't test them thoroughly enough
to be comfortable giving them to our users under *any* circumstances.
If you're willing to put in the work to create the stages, ensuring you
have some kind of mirror space for them, and plan on supporting them
yourself, then more power to you.  You definitely won't hear me complain
about it.  However, as soon as your work starts impacting mine, such as
when I start getting a bunch of bogus bug reports on the non-release
stages, you're going to get quite a bit of complaining from me.  The
*last* thing that we need is some half-assed non-working stages out
there in the wild, with users using them, then complaining to us,
thereby *increasing* our workload.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation