Debian Sync - Re: Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, February 28, 2013 06:17:17 PM Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> On 28 February 2013 17:05, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 28, 2013 07:31:49 AM Rick Spencer wrote:
> >> Daily Quality means that developers can ensure their components are
> >> stable
> >> and useful before they upload, and our processes protect us from most
> >> mistakes these days. The result is that 13.04 has been as robust a
> >> release
> >> over the last many weeks as 12.10 was when we delivered. We have achieved
> >> rolling release quality in our development practices, so we can
> >> capitalize
> >> on this capability now.
> > 
> > Don't forget that Debian has been in Freeze throughout this time.  Once
> > Wheezy is released, we will start getting a lot more, less mature,
> > packages via Debian sync.   ~75% of the archive comes from Debian
> > unmodified in Ubuntu and the experience during 13.04 development with
> > packages from Debian is definitely atypical.
> > 
> > Also, it is normal to upload beta releases to the development series. 
> > It's a simple fact that they are not going to be as polished as we'd like
> > for regular users.  You can beat the daily quality drum all you want for
> > Canonical sponsored development effort, but that's not where most of our
> > software comes from.
> 
> But just like debian we know have britney, together with many
> automatic adt tests which we run on all reverse dependencies in
> jenkins. Uploading beta version of software into sid has never been
> welcomed and by default it gets released versions of software. Thus
> I'd expect our devel release to be more stable than testing.

Ubuntu's britney doesn't get you more than the package builds, installs, and 
doesn't break installability of other packages.  For something that actual 
users are expected to use, that is nowhere near sufficient.

Beta and otherwise buggy software gets uploaded to Debian Unstable all the 
time.  To pretend otherwise is begging for trouble.  There is even less in 
Ubuntu to prevent such packages from getting into the release pocket than 
there is in Debian where time and RC bugs are factored in.

Scott K