Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)

Steve Langasek steve.langasek at ubuntu.com
Thu Feb 28 18:03:23 UTC 2013


On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 11:44:47AM -0500, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
> > == For Core/MOTU Developers ==
> > For the people who are actually making Ubuntu (the people on this thread
> > I hope) there are some clear wins as well.

> > 1. Only 2 releases to support, the LTS and the rolling releases. That
> > means fewer SRUs to worry about, and only for LTS releases. More time
> > and attention to focus on what we are building instead of what we had built.
> > 2. Features land when they are ready, not earlier or later.
> > 3. No one will get stuck supporting "old" software that is not part of
> > an LTS release.

> I think this will greatly simplify handling bugs. If there's a bug in an
> LTS release, it's worthwhile to get it fixed, as that's what most of our
> users will be using. If there's a bug in the development release, it's
> easy to fix it or to move to a newer upstream that has fixed it. I've
> seen bugs and SRUs go untested for a long time because they are in an
> older interim release, which nobody is actually using anymore.

Yes, with my SRU hat I'm in complete agreement here.  Unverified SRUs for
interim releases every time we do an SRU to an LTS are a constant source of
frustration for me, and make it starkly clear that testers (and by
extension, users) don't actually care about interim releases to the same
degree that they do about the LTS.  That makes interim release SRUs a pretty
demotivating thing to work on for everyone involved, because it's a lot of
extra work for little extra benefit.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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