SchoolTool not suitable for Production?

[Tom Hoffman]

Hi Michael,

I'm the project manager for SchoolTool so I can address this.

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Michael Paric
<mparic at compbizsolutions.com> wrote:
> In looking to provide a "server in a box" for schools based on Ubuntu, I was excited to include SchoolTool as it is an Ubuntu-backed project. However, I would never install a non-LTS version in a production environment due to the stability issues inherent with interim releases.

Just to be clear, the relationship between SchoolTool and Ubuntu is
that of siblings, not parent/child.  That is, Mark Shuttleworth
started both, and in particular funds SchoolTool, but for the reasons
Jonathan mentioned -- kind of an extreme packaging situation with many
small dependencies (a looong story in itself) -- SchoolTool is not
part of Ubuntu and Edubuntu at this point.  We just publish Ubuntu
packages in our PPA.  We should be in Edubuntu 11.04, however.

> So this information from the SchoolToll Installation page (http://book.schooltool.org/htmlhelp/install.html) really bugs me:
>
> "Installing SchoolTool on Ubuntu
> Start by installing the server or desktop edition of Ubuntu Linux version 10.10, “Maverick Meerkat,” or 10.04, “Lucid Lynx.” With Lucid you will get SchoolTool 1.4; with Maverick you will get SchoolTool 1.5.
>
> SchoolTool 1.5 is considered a maintenance release. If you are creating a dedicated system to run SchoolTool, using Maverick will give you a few extra features, but if you have some reason to prefer Lucid, the overall differences between SchoolTool 1.4 and 1.5 are small.
>
> SchoolTool 1.6 for Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” is slated for more substantial changes and improvements. You will need to upgrade your distribution from Lucid or Maverick to get SchoolTool 1.6 when the time comes."
>
> Are you serious? Ubuntu is expecting us to upgrade production installations every six months in order to get improvements and fixes? Perhaps there is a better answer.

Here's one way of looking at it.  What do you expect to happen when
you do "apt-get update" on a deployed LTS server?  You probably expect
"fixes."  You do not expect major new features to suddenly appear.  In
particular you don't expect the user interface to change significantly
without warning.  And you *really* don't expect the user interface to
change significantly on an application you just spent two months
training teachers to use.

At least that's the way we're looking at it right now.

Put another way, the reason a Long Term Support release is stable is
because it doesn't keep changing.  That's kind of the point.  If you
want the latest and greatest, update every six months.  It is your
choice.

Having said that, we did think for a while that we would just maintain
packages each point release across several supported versions, e.g.,
1.4, 1.5, 1.6 for Lucid, 1.5, 1.6 for Maverick, etc.  That gets crazy
for our release manager really quick though, and I don't think it is a
good approach for users either.

So, in summary: we intend to backport *fixes* to relevant earlier
versions of Ubuntu -- based on which versions actually seem to remain
in use for long periods, LTS releases in particular.  Currently, new
features will go into new releases packaged for new versions of
Ubuntu.

BUT, if anyone else wants to help maintain packages for specific
earlier versions of Ubuntu, we're not against it, it is just a lot
more work than you'd think to do it by default.

If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to let me know.
 We are actively interested in helping companies use SchoolTool in
"server in a box" solutions, as has already been successfully done by
at least one international vendor
(http://education.critical-links.com/).

--Tom