[Bug 445032] Re: eBox should be removed from Jaunty-stable

[Javier Uruen Val]

Hi,

eBox packages in Jaunty are pretty old (0.12.x). Karmic packages are
newer (1.3.5). I think another approach would be to backport them to
Jaunty.

Having said that I would like to explain why eBox packages are a bit
different to other packages in terms of release cycle.

We have  been uploading eBox packages to Ubuntu following its normal
release cycle. This has a potential serious drawback in terms of
quality.

For eBox, an ubuntu release is, so to speak, its "upstream" as we
provide a tool to configure the some of the services that run on top of
the OS.

Quick example, there's an eBox module to take care of the samba service.
During the release cycle of Jaunty, we uploaded an ebox-samba package
before Feature Freeze which worked perfectly with the  samba version
shipped in Jaunty at that moment. The release cycle went on, and at some
point, a new samba version was uploaded to the Jaunty repos via Feature
Exception. This new version includes new syntax or new features that
made the former configuration not to work. When this happens we have to
try to detect this before release and provide a new package to fix it
before the official release takes place, otherwise we have to go with
SRUs.

The above samba example is real:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ebox-samba/+bug/354150

The fact that we upload packages before FF,  and the services and stuff
we depend on might perfectly change before release makes hard for us to
deliver quality packages. You can't imagine how things can break
overnight :)

We try to improve the process by having a lot of automatic tests run
before release to find out if a new package has broken something.


In regards to which distro is officially supported by eBox platform. I would like to add that our "official" packages are released for Hardy. And not only the packages, you can download a custom CD installer from eBox platform website which is also based on Hardy. However, we also release packages for other Ubuntu releases such as Jaunty or Karmic. Releasing for other releases than LTS gives us a chance to try new features shipped with new package versions.

As we are targeting at server platforms, it makes a lot of sense for us
to be based  on an LTS release. We still have packages for Jaunty and
Karmic though, but most of our users are using Hardy. That's where most
of the testing takes place and where  you can find the most stable
packages. This is the reason why we recommend using Hardy packages for
production boxes.

-- 
eBox should be removed from Jaunty-stable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/445032
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