Thought - Delay auto-updates of software to reduce downtime

[Shawn McMahon]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 11:30:42AM +1000, Alexander Jacob Tsykin said:
> what about for all the users who don't pay for support, who are the 
> overwhelming majority. Are they then to be deprived of the fix for as much as 
> a fortnight while it is in the testing pipeline?

Which one of our free support channels is it that you think this won't
work for?  A Wiki page is easily created containing all the necessary
commands.  You'd have to do that anyway for the commercial support,
which is part of why I chose to address that portion of the email to
which I replied.

If you know of a way we can either provide only updates that have been
tested on exactly identical situations as every single one of our
millions of users and thereby absolutely guarantee nobody has a problem,
or otherwise ensure that when one user has a problem the fix is
available in minutes and is fully tested on exactly identical situations
as every single one of our millions of users so it doesn't create a
problem for somebody else, please enlighten me.

Every piece of software in the entire world, free or proprietary, faces
this problem.  For that matter, most manufacturers of solid objects
intended for use by consumers face it as well.

We can't shove a fix to all of our users the instant it's packaged.  We
can certainly make it available to them if they choose, however, and
doing so is a trivial and well-solved problem in general, and in
specific comes down to case-by-case documentation.

Every single one of our users faces this problem with every patch for
every bug.  Not shoving untested patches out to the general public isn't
"depriving them for a fortnight"; it's necessary and unavoidable if you
have a quality-control process.

If you don't want to wait, you have several options:

1) Download the package that's being tested.
2) Download upstream and make your own package.
3) Downgrade to a previous version of the package.
4) Work around the problem until the fix is tested.

-proposed will make #1 easier, but it's already possible.


-- 
   Shawn McMahon    | 
   EIV Consulting   | Peace is a symptom of victory.
 http://www.eiv.com | 
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