openSUSE packagers' take on the 3 month release cycle

[Luca Beltrame]

In data lunedì 08 luglio 2013 21:55:28, hai scritto:

> From total ignorace, how much time do you need to change a 4.12 to a 4.13 in
> a spec file? What is consuming your time doing a packaging of a new
> release?

Major releases:

These require more work, rather obviously, although a small number of us 
tracks master so we usually "experiment" with packages before pushing them 
down to users. The points raised by Scott K mostly apply, it requires a number 
of by hand adjustments to the package "templates" and then feed them to the 
Open Build Service, wait till they're built, check for errors and warnings, 
rinse and repeat. 

In addition, patches we ship that are not upstreamed may need rebasing, or may 
need to get dropped, etc.

Splitting of course adds more work to ensure that files end up in the right 
package and not on Mars. Also, when we add packages to the main distro (as 
opposed to 3rd party repos which we also offer), if there are new additions 
like services, KAuth helpers, etc., they must go through security review, 
which takes a long time (already existing stuff doesn't matter, this is only 
for new things).

Minor releases:

Minor releases (except when splitting is involved) are usually less work-
intensive, although the matter with patches etc needs to be evaluated each 
time. In the easiest case, it's just a matter of waiting for the OBS to churn 
out packages.

Hopefully this is more clear.

-- 
Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team
KDE Science supporter
GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79
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