openSUSE packagers' take on the 3 month release cycle

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday, July 09, 2013 12:52:04 PM Àlex Fiestas wrote:
> 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.

We (not me, someone else working on Kubuntu) solved a longstanding riddle in 
our build infrastructure that was blocking having regular builds of the stable 
branches.  We're looking into the possibility of providing tip of stable 
packages that would make it easier for our users to test the stable branch.  
If we can get better testing and upstream developers do a good job of landing 
suitable fixes, then it ought to be mostly a matter of the KDE release team 
being willing to do the releasing.

Scott K