Mythbuntu LTS plan

[Stéphane Graber]

On 05/09/2012 01:20 PM, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> Hi Tech Board,
> 
> Kate Steward recommended that I should reach out to the tech board on
> behalf of the Mythbuntu team to help get agreement around the plan we
> want to follow for our releases going forward.  I believe we're a bit
> different than the rest of the Ubuntu based flavors in that our users
> demand much less churn with their setups as they are generally HTPCs.
>  We have done some analysis and consequently found that a majority of
> our user base gravitate toward LTS releases.  
> 
> We currently provide PPA's with stable builds of upstream fixes and new
> releases across an intersection of Ubuntu releases as dictated by our
> PPA page (www.mythbuntu.org/repos <http://www.mythbuntu.org/repos>).
>  Upstream has integrated (opt in) statistics for usage, and LTS
> dominates (OS tab of http://smolt.mythtv.org/static/stats/stats.html).
> 
> So with all of that said, our team all agrees that it makes more sense
> to only ship ISO images of LTS releases.  We can continue to provide
> packages that work with the archive and misc transitions as the archive
> evolves during interim releases.  But not creating ISO images at the new
> interim releases, we would help cater to what our users are asking for
> while being able to reduce our effort with every cycle in fixing every
> problem related to the ISO creation.  
> 
> We'd still like to spin updated point releases of the LTS releases, but
> no new features would be introduced during those point releases.  That
> way we can still provide updates for the users introducing new hardware
> that they need the support from backported kernels and software stack
> versions.  So we'll still be signed up for testing those respins, it
> should be a lot less effort than all the bugs that get introduced with
> interim releases and need to be fixed constantly throughout the cycle.
> 
> What does the tech board think of this proposal?
> 
> Thanks,
>  
> -- 
> Mario Limonciello
> superm1 at gmail.com <mailto:superm1 at gmail.com>

Hi Mario,

I can certainly see how that makes sense for Mythbuntu and I'm sure
it'll be an interesting experiment.

Just a few questions on top of Colin's:

What's your plan regarding the usual work on the Mythbuntu related
packages between LTS releases, are you planning on doing the usual
merges/syncs/transitions and general FTBFS/NBS fixing even though you
won't release images or are you planning to try and do it all in one
shot before an LTS?

To respect the "fix things in development before you fix them in stable"
rule, you'll have to do your bugfixes first in the current development
release, then backport the bugfix to your LTS release.
In some case this will likely mean working on two quite different fixes
as things can change quite a bit during the two years between LTSes, are
you comfortable with doing that?
Are you also planning on uploading such bugfixes to intermediate release
should there be demand for it (from outside Mythbuntu)?

I'm also wondering whether you're planning on following and fixing
reported bugs for anyone who's specifically upgrading from your latest
LTS release to the following non-LTS release or plan on just dealing
with all the upgrade bugs when working on the next LTS?

And one last thought, though not really a big deal, as you won't have
people upgrading from the latest non-LTS to the LTS, are you planning on
allowing LTS-to-LTS upgrades at release time or also wait till the first
point release to enable these (like Ubuntu does)?


-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com

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