More Plasma bug fix releases

[Eric Hameleers]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2015, Martin Graesslin wrote:

> On Tuesday, October 27, 2015 6:25:42 AM CET Eric Hameleers wrote:
>> 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.
>
> do you have ideas how this could work? Do you know of any existing
> (web)applications to keep track of it? If there is some it should be
> relatively easy to set it up - "just" some git hooks for commits on the stable
> branch.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
> Ok, thank's for the info. So in that case given the schedule I outlined I
> expect you would go with 5.5.2 or 5.5.3 and skip the previous ones?
>
> Cheers
> Martin

Hi Martin,

Indeed I would aim to skip at least the .0 releases and perhaps even 
the .1 releases.

Cheers, Eric

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