Did we really release 8.04?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:06:16 +0200 Sebastian Breier 
<Sebastian.Breier at gmx.net> wrote:
>Am Montag, den 07.07.2008, 09:33 +0100 schrieb Matt Zimmerman:
>> On Sun, Jul 06, 2008 at 03:27:46PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> > Do we need to reconsider how we approach getting to a release? For an 
LTS 
>> > release should we just add 2 months on the schedule?  It was done 
>> > officially for Dapper and I wonder if we didn't do it informally for 
Hardy?
>> 
>> For 8.04, a deliberate effort was made by Canonical to continue
>> stabilization in response to real-world testing after the 8.04 release.  
In
>> practice, many issues which affect users are only discovered when end 
users
>> begin to upgrade and use the new release on a daily basis, and for this
>> release, we prepared a comprehensive response to this feedback.
>
>That was exactly my argument (to myself) when I thought of answering to
>the original poster.
>
>Yes, Ubuntu 8.04 was kind of a low point for me, because (while it was
>stable), there were many regressions and bugs.
>Sometimes I wished the release had been put back to 8.06.
>
>The problem is that even with all the alpha/beta/rc testing available to
>Ubuntu, the most tests are only done when the release is out.
>
>So, better to release and fix afterwards... *really* focussing on the
>bugfixing though, as has been done, *not* focussing on the next release
>immediately.

This is not sustainable in the long term.  Before long people will be 
saying, "Everyone know not to upgrade Ubuntu until the first point 
release".  Then we don't get the end user base to test until .1 and we have 
to bugfix from there.

Once 8.04 was released and its problems became apparent, then fixing it was 
needed and the response from Canonical is laudable.  We need to find a way 
to avoid repeating the experience.  Personally, I'd like to hear users 
saying, "Yes, I know it's beta, but it's an Ubuntu beta so I'm sure it's 
fine."

I think the only path to better tested releases is higher quality test 
releases.  I suspect more discipline about feature freeze is a part of it, 
but I don't know what else?

Scott K