Avoiding fragmentation with a rolling release

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Steve Langasek wrote on 01/03/13 21:21:
> 
> On Fri, Mar 01, 2013 at 10:55:14AM +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas
> wrote: ...
> 
>> As I understand the purpose of monthly snapshots so far, we
>> could achieve the same effect simply by adding a "Display
>> monthly" item to that second menu.
> 
> "Display monthly" wouldn't guarantee that users who update monthly
> are updating to the *same* set of monthly packages.  Displaying the
> prompt monthly, even if the user consistently acted on it as soon
> as they saw it, would cause inevitable drift over time;

Not only drift, but they wouldn't even be starting on the same day of
the month. (They'd be starting whenever an admin first connected to
the Internet after installation.)

> we would therefore not be able to provide security support for
> these users, because the security pocket would be updated with
> packages built for the previous monthly snapshot and the user has
> (for example) monthly + 5 days installed.
> 
> ...

There would be no "previous monthly snapshot". I'm proposing a monthly
option for prompting about non-security updates, *instead of* monthly
snapshots.

- -- 
mpt

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