12.10 upgrade path - Re: Let's Discuss Interim Releases (and a Rolling Release)

[Scott Kitterman]

On Friday, March 01, 2013 08:15:13 PM Evan Dandrea wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> 
wrote:
> > No would be a good time to be discussing this change for after 14.04. 
> > Doing this mid LTS - LTS cycle is going to be problematic for a variety
> > of reasons. I we had a year to get ready, then we might be in a
> > reasonable place to decide on making a transition like this.
> 
> I emphatically disagree. We have been laying the foundation for
> exactly this sort of thing for years. You've already read about the
> extensive testing on jenkins.qa.ubuntu.com, britney, the phasing of
> updates, the wealth of data from errors.ubuntu.com, changes to
> update-manager, and many other supporting actors to this that are
> already in place today or not far off. If we need more than that, lets
> get off the mailing list and get it written, but lets do it while
> moving forward.
> 
> Many of these tools will need to be developed in motion. We wont know
> how effective they are and what improvements need to be made until
> we're running them with real data from the rolling release.

Personally, I prefer the approach where we figure out what kind of tires we 
need on the next car and plan for them when we buy the car over an approach 
where we try to change the tires while the car is in motion.

While a lot of work has been done, I think the discussion to date shows that 
this is no where near completely thought through at the requirements level, 
let alone a mature concept ready for implementation.

I think a reasonable path for moving forward is to plan for transition to a 
rolling model after 14.04.  That doesn't mean work needs to wait, just the we 
should demonstrably have all the bits in place needed to throw the switch and 
move to the new development model before the decision to do it is made, not 
after.

Scott K