More Plasma bug fix releases

[Eric Hameleers]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2015, Martin Graesslin wrote:

> Hi distribution maintainers,
>
> I was thinking about the problem of how we can get bug fixes quicker to our
> user. With a three month release cycle a one-month bug fix cycle sounds too
> long to me.
>
> So I thought we should make bug fix releases faster and more often. In 5.4 we
> already went for this partially by having the first bug fix earlier. I wanted
> to know how much work this would mean for our distributions. If we ship out
> way more bug fix releases, would you be able to work with it? Would it block
> you? Would you have to skip releases? Or is it just pressing a button to run
> automatic scripts which upload your packages?
>
> What had I been thinking about? I was thinking about a Fibonacci based release
> schedule. This gives us quick bug fix releases directly after the release with
> slowly larger intervals. Of course it would mean tag and release happens on
> same day.
>
> So a hypothetical release schedule for Plasma 5.5 could look like:
> * 2015-12-08: 5.5.0
> * 2015-12-15: 5.5.1
> * 2015-12-22: 5.5.2
> * 2016-01-05: 5.5.3
> * 2016-01-26: 5.5.4
> (* 2016-03-01: 5.5.5)
>
> Opinions?
>
> Cheers
> Martin

I like the idea of getting more visibility for bugfixes that will give 
the enduser a better Plasma experience. Ideal for me would be a patch 
tracker (not the same as a bug tracker) where intermediate patches are 
made available that are scheduled for inclusion in the next release. 
That allows me as a package builder to assimilate those patches if I 
think they can not wait until the next release.

I do much more than maintaining the Plasma 5 package set for 
Slackware. So my users get an update once a month, where I incorporate 
the latest Frameworks, Plasma and Applications. It is just not humanly 
possible to do more than that. Internediate patch releases will be 
ignored by me, that is why I hinted at a patch tracker instead.

Cheers, Eric

-- 
Eric Hameleers <alien at slackware.com>
Home: http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/