Avoiding fragmentation with a rolling release

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 05:15:38PM -0600, Mario Limonciello wrote:
> What about a rolling static base instead?  Do a unionfs (or similar) on top
> of it.  Deliver an encompassing image from month to month.  Turn off apt as
> a mechanism to deliver updates.  But allow it to be turned back on.  Even
> if you don't install anything on top of it, then every month a new static
> base comes up and updates it.  If you decide to do daily updates on top,
> some of them might be in next month's new static base already, so that
> would need to be handled gracefully.

IMO the point of this rolling release strategy is to reduce engineering
effort so that it can be diverted towards other things.  In that light,
I'm sceptical about fundamentally replacing the entire upgrade strategy
for the desktop as an initial requirement for making any of it work.
Sure, some kind of image-based updates will likely be required for phone
clients and such, and I expect that eventually we'd want to converge
that with the desktop; but this is at the very least several months down
the line, probably more.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]