2c about the development of ubuntu - expiremental packages e.g. swsusp2

[John C. McCabe-Dansted]

On Tuesday 03 January 2006 19:36, Daniel Stone wrote:
> We don't have anyone with the requisite depth of experience and
> knowledge to deal with deep scim and uim bugs two weeks before release.
> If you screw something up two weeks before release, you don't get a
> second chance to fix it.  So, as useful as bug reports with 'if you
> update to this CVS version, it seems to possibly be fixed' are in the
> general case, they just don't cut it two weeks out from release.

A common problem is the conflict between the need for stability and the need 
for the latest version with essential bug-fixs.

I was thinking that there should be an expiremental repository. So if there is 
a strong desire for an updated version of package X, for which the new 
version cannot be included in main, we could put up a updated package called 
"expiremental-X" in the expiremental repository.  

Then people who *need* the new version can do an ``apt-get install 
expiremental-X'' without disturbing the stability of other Ubuntu users. 

Ideally, we would be able to install expiremental packages side by side with 
stable ones. E.g. Change the install prefix for expiremental packages 
to /usr/expiremental. Obviously this would not possible for all packages, 
however a 
   dpkg -r expiremental-X
   apt-get install X
would still be much nicer to a user than having to try to build expiremental-X 
themselves and have it live entirely outside their package management system.

I am trying to build a non-broken swsusp2 enabled Breezy kernel. Now, in this 
spirit, if I somehow succeed, would anyone be interested if I put the .deb up 
some where so people can download&dpkg-i it? (Actually if someone has already 
done this, *I* am interested.)

-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted
Masters Student