pre-releases of rc1

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Monday 29 June 2009 13:41:03 Helio Chissini de Castro wrote:
> Aaron J. Seigo escreveu:
> > hi all ...
> >
> > looking at the bugs i'm getting about "rc1", it seems that Arch and
> > Mandriva have both made "rc1" packages available to their users. don't
> > know if we need to discuss anything with them, but there you go.
> >
> > as sebas noted, this seems to be the usual "push the packages into ultra-
> > unstable-testing distro repo a few days in advance" thing. so not sure
> > it's really toooo much of an issue. they are just trying to get ahead of
> > the curve so they can release quickly with us.
> >
> > maybe a gentle reminder from the release team to be sure that the
> > packages are up to date when we release and to tell their testers of
> > their ultra- unstable-testing repo not to report issues until they have
> > packages with the actual final release? shrug
>
> Well, we do not released any packages for stable, so users that are
> using "cooker" are prone to know that whole thing can be broken and
> that's the goal of that, fix it, discover what is wrong.
> So, if there are some unhappy Mandriva user blaming the current state,
> instalation, please rereoute to us, because we know how to deal with then.
> Talking seriously, there some people that assume that the unstable
> repository should be stable and for years and it's been a regular
> discussion on mail lists, so our officila position is, if is cooker, it
> can be broken and is nobody's fault, not the projects nor even the
> distro. The users must be aware that it happens.
>
>  From our part, if this caused any stress, i apologise..

It's not so much stress, but usefulness of the RC for us. If people report 
against RC1, and it isn't what RC1 is, the bugreport (which is in principle 
exactly why we do an RC) becomes less useful.

The problem would be solved if:

- the packages are only spread when the RC is actually out
- the packages that are spread before that are not called RC, but something  
  indicating that it's indeed a more or less random snapshot

We "release" the RC to packagers earlier to find packaging screw-ups, the RC 
release to users is to get feedback about the quality of the code itself. 
I.e., if it doesn't compile, it should be caught before the release date, if 
it has bugs, they should be fixed before the final release. An RC for example 
is expected to build, but to contain bugs. A final release is expected to 
build and not contain showstoppers.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
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