Better testing of tagged tars

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Dissabte, 9 de febrer de 2013, a les 19:19:24, Pierre Schmitz va escriure:
> Am 05.02.2013 20:42, schrieb Albert Astals Cid:
> > El Dilluns, 4 de febrer de 2013, a les 21:26:31, Andrea Scarpino va 
escriure:
> >> We'd like to know if we can put the packages in a repository not enabled,
> >> neither available, at install time. The instructions on how to enable
> >> this
> >> repo are in a dedicated thread in the official forum and/or in the
> >> official
> >> wiki. Oh, and in the KDE wiki page "how to install betas" as well.
> > 
> > To me that looks too widely available.
> > 
> > People will read random wikis, do random things and then you end up with
> > them reporting bugs about packages that don't really exist yet.
> 
> This has been an issue for a long time. It is good to have the packages
> tested before release but the requirement to keep these private till the
> official release makes it hard for distributions. Our vcs and package
> distribution system is public and open by design. Trying to restrict
> this just for KDE would be hard and wont happen. Right now this means
> the pre-releases are only tested by the packager himself.
> 
> I see several solutions here:
> 1) We spin our own tars right from the git repos.

I don't see why this is an improvement. Can you elaborate?

> 2) We don't start packaging before the official release

Depending on how much your build time is, that might be a solution, after all 
the days we give in advance is so that packagers can create the packages so 
that when we release you can switch the button and have the packages ready. 
OTOH if building is fast enough for you, you can very well do it on the 
release day.

> 3) Release the new tars in public but don't announce them yet. If there
> are issues, don't retag but release a point update; e.g. 4.1.0.1 etc..
> Once the major build errors have been ironed out after a few days,
> announce the final release. 

This is an option, and if other people agree this is a solution we might 
pursue it, though I'm sure introducing four numbers in the releases will be a 
pain somewhere :D

> We may remove old broken tars then, but
> please let's keep real git tags. 

> And also never alter a tagged release.

We never alter a tagged release (exception of human errors of course)

> I don't wanted to sound too aggressive here, but right now the
> pre-releases are not widely tested and we would all benefit if we can
> improve that situation.

pre-releases are not there for testing, they are there so packagers can have 
packages ready for the annoucement date. For testing we do Betas and RCs.

Of course another option is lifting the requirement for the pre-packages not 
being publicly available, after all the packages will most likely be the real 
thing, so if everyone agrees it is better lifting this requirement, we can do 
it, the fact that *I* personally like it the way it is doesn't mean it's the 
better way.

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Pierre