my little rant...

[Ralf Mardorf]

Without doubts you don't understand what a rolling release is.

On Sat, 11 Nov 2017 10:52:49 +0100, Xen wrote:
>> Arch Linux is a real rolling release and it doesn't suffer from
>> soname issues. Arch Linux has got a testing repository and software
>> gets pushed to the "regular" repositories after a process that
>> ensures that there will be no soname and some other issues. It only
>> requires that users never do partial upgrades and that they need to
>> care about local build packages.  
>
>So then they are mini discrete releases, nothing continuous.

No, there is no freeze, it happens continuously, but
especially regarding...

>Also your use of "soname" is really annoying.

...soname issues, it's important to sync everything that depends on
another thing. What is annoying with pointing out a special thing you
need to consider for a rolling release? This process could happen within
an hour, excepted of some packages that require a few days, to ensure by
sign offs, that e.g. the upstream mainline kernel doesn't include
regressions. There needs to be a process to grant stability.

>> Wrong, structural changes happen especially when using a rolling
>> release.  
>
>No, they just happen more frequently. Or rather, you are turning this 
>"rolling release" into "more incremental steps" which is fundamentally 
>no different from "one big step" -- you are just changing the step
>size.

No, there are no _such_ steps at all, excepted that everything that
depends on another thing, needs to be upgraded at the same time. A
release model distro could be upgraded from one to another release with
handling structural changes automatically, a rolling release distro
sometimes needs user intervention.

When I installed an Ubuntu rc I had to step in, too. Systemd was split
into another individual package, so I lost some functionality, resp. I
needed to find out what happened and needed to install the new package
manually. This isn't required when doing a release upgrade or withina
regular release and you usually don't need to fear soname issues and
similar things for local build packages, within a release cycle.

>> When using a rolling release it's wise to subscribe to an
>> announcement list and/or to read the news on the homepage, since a
>> structural change does force the user to step in, by running commands
>> mentioned by the announcements and the homepage news.  
>
>Well the whole point of what I wrote was about stability.

If you customize a rolling release you sometimes need to organize the
new structure, e.g. regarding local build packages, for example
https://www.archlinux.org/news/perl-library-path-change/ or
https://www.archlinux.org/news/binaries-move-to-usrbin-requiring-update-intervention/ .