Dependencies in the PPA for Jaunty

[Maritza Mendez]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Aaron Bentley <aaron at aaronbentley.com>wrote:

>
> No, we consider the dependency to be the other way around-- bzrtools
> must pass compatibility testing against the current bzr RC before
> bzrtools can be released.
>
> Forcing bzr to retain compatibility with bzrtools would retard bzr
> enhancements, whereas forcing bzrtools to stay up-to-date with bzr is
> rarely more than a few minutes' work.
>
> Aaron
>


I understand what you are saying.  Requiring bzrtools to test against bzrRC
is fine.  But we still need a mechanism to help people decide when upgrading
makes sense for them.  That's what I was really trying to say.

You would be correct to point out that every team using bzr (or considering
using bzr) should do acceptance testing before adopting a new version of
bzr.  But I dare say no one ever adopts just bzr.  What they adopt is a
toolset including bzr and some plugins.  And for better or worse the bzr
development community is vastly more qualified to assess the toolset as a
whole than anyone else.  So winning mindshare will be well served by
collecting the plugin compatibility documentation at one place.

As I understand it, this job of making sure everything works together is
basically done the hard way by distrinbution packagers, like the ubuntu
packagers.  But that happens so far upstream, compared to how fast the bzr
team fixes bugs.  And as you say, the plugins can usually be updated in a
few minutes.  Distros are slower, for good reason.  So there seems to be a
need for an intermediate layer, which gets the hard work of the talented bzr
core and plugin developers out to users faster than a distro can or should
but with at least some minimal promise of stability.  And maybe the bzr RM
should not have to do this.  Maybe it is a new role of Package Integration
Manager?

We're not talkign about just any project here.  Bazaar is special.  We trust
it with our data.  The time to build confidence is worthy.

Normally, I keep quiet unless I can volunteer a solution myself.  I'm
breaking that rule here, because I think this is so important.

Thanks for the open discussion.

-M
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