openSUSE packagers' take on the 3 month release cycle

[Àlex Fiestas]

On Tuesday 09 July 2013 06:43:48 Scott Kitterman wrote:
> I want the point releases.  The reasons for wanting them are for
> consistency, marketing, and for distro policy releases its' much easier to
> get a set of packages that are part of a release through the post distro
> release QA process than a set of indiviual changes.  Also, as a pratical
> matter, we manage to find the volunteer motivation to package a point
> release, but only rarely for individual changes.  I don't think it would
> help much.
We can have as many point releases as needed, in any version as long as there 
is somebody doing the backporting and the testing.

The reality, even nowdays is that even though we do backports almost nobody is 
testing the stable branch (and some people even forget to do backports). So we 
end up having point releases that are less stable than their predecessors.

So, in anyway (independently of 3 or 6 months release schedule) we need a 
better way of doing minor releases.

> A related point is KDE support policy.  AIUI, currently KDE will provide
> security support for the previous two releases.  After that, distros are on
> their own.  Did you envision that changing to four with this proposal?  If
> not, you're cutting my upstream security support in half.
I was not aware of this, I'm sure we can include it.

> I would like to figure out something about a better way to test point
> releases and be able to do them more reliably/longer.  I'll think about it.
>  I do think this has to be addressed in some manner before going to your
> proposed schedule.
As i said before, we need the interested parties to do the backporting and the 
testing, you are the ones that know what is bothering your users.

We also need to do a better work on making your life easier, use bugzilla 
correctly, commit tags etc.