Ubuntu Monthly Update Cadence Proposal

[Bryan Quigley]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 10:49 PM, Robie Basak <robie.basak at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 10:39:00PM -0500, Bryan Quigley wrote:
>> I see a few possible ways:
>> 1.
>>  * Packages that aren't part of a set that is coupled with others
>> could be synced at any time
>>  * Coupled sets of packages could be synced in a similar staggered way
>> as directly uploaded packages
>
> Can you defined "coupled"?

Highly coupled - separate projects that should usually be safe to
update independently.  However, if they were updated together it would
be very difficult to determine which was at fault.

My classic example is you have a graphical issue after updating the
Kernel and Mesa.

My ideal is it would be an evolving list - so if there are many
regressions between two products we start viewing them as highly
coupled.

It would also be a subset of packages that we consider in the critical
path - so for example we'd likely want to define couplings for more
packages in main then universe, etc.  We'd have to decide these
priorities as a project.

> With a complex dependency tree, everything is
> coupled. What happens when a sync gets stuck in proposed due to an
> installability problem?

I have no idea, what happens today when that occurs?

> Who are you proposing will do the additional work of the ongoing
> management of all of this?

The hard part from my point of view is deciding as a project what we
want to define couplings for, what the couplings should be, and what
gets priority generally.

I definitely don't have all the answers - but I believe this would
reduce the workload generally rather than make it worse.   I'm willing
to do a lot of work to get this done (including changing roles), but
in the end it will be up the various teams..