5:26 p.m.
----- "Genes MailLists" <lists(a)sapience.com> wrote:
Possibly - but without the support from at least some of the Fedora
core team (fesco, board, key redhatters etc) and possibly some on the
RH
business side recognizing some potential benefit in the enterprise
setting, this is quite likely not to go too far .. and so far I'm not
aware of much support for this ..
This can of course be because these key folk, after careful
consideration, do not see it as a viable choice to make for Fedora
and/or ultimately its impact on RHEL.
They are, after all, key players for good reason(s) ... I cannot
imagine they are not familiar with the pros/cons of such an approach.
The benefits/drawbacks of a rolling release are rather well known
these days (notwithstanding those that somehow still believe rawhide
is
a rolling release .. :-) )...
Given that, do folks still believe it could be worthwhile for the
rolling-releasers to build a case in a wiki somewhere?
Gene, forgive me while I go off on a slight tangent forking the thread.
I do not thing it is worthwhile for them to do so. There may already be a document
somewhere on the wiki on this topic. It will never be found because since the day
mediawiki was rolled out there has not been a usable search. I would think that taking a
look at existing infrastructure tickets such as the one for getting a usable search for
the wiki would be time better spent than writing more pages for the black hole that the
wiki has become or dreaming about something that has been shot down repeatedly.
-- Bob
6:21 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/28/2012 04:26 PM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
Gene, forgive me while I go off on a slight tangent forking the
thread.
I do not thing it is worthwhile for them to do so. There may already be a document
somewhere on the wiki on this topic. It will never be found because since the day
mediawiki was rolled out there has not been a usable search. I would think that taking a
look at existing infrastructure tickets such as the one for getting a usable search for
the wiki would be time better spent than writing more pages for the black hole that the
wiki has become or dreaming about something that has been shot down repeatedly.
-- Bob
https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1...
pulls up some relevant links:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Release_Lifecycle_Proposals
and
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Stable_release_updates_vision
along with a couple other irrelevant links. Doesn't seem that hard to find.
--
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager 303-415-9701 x222
NWRA/CoRA Division FAX: 303-415-9702
3380 Mitchell Lane orion(a)cora.nwra.com
Boulder, CO 80301 http://www.cora.nwra.com
6:42 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
Fuduntu Dev here.
I'm not going to bore you all on how great rolling is, and how it's a
great model that works for everyone - I'll assume the good folks of
Fedora have already researched many different models. Instead, what
I'm going to talk about is the feasibility and the logistics.
Fuduntu didn't start out as a rolling release. We had versions for a
while, until we realised we were basically releasing newer snapshots
of our current software with slightly different defaults.
Having discussed it as a team, we decided to move to rolling - less
work for us to handle the repos and create images, less hassle for our
users to reinstall with each release just because we'd changed some
default package or updated something vital to a newer version. Our
users could just update, and we could just create images. Simples.
The transition was painless. I can't say I noticed much fallout, if
any. Perhaps fewt can remember some, but I can't. Our distro is pretty
stable, with new software - something that's a treat in the Linux
world.
However, it costs. Development time, it costs. There's 3 of us
packaging things, along with 3 newly initiated interns. It also costs
our users to some extent - there's no easy way for them to prevent
something upgrading. They have to roll with the flow. This doesn't
work out great for everyone. A project doing the same for Fedora would
need the backing of experienced developers with time or payment.
11:18 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/29/2012 06:12 AM, Noah Hall wrote:
Fuduntu Dev here.
I'm not going to bore you all on how great rolling is, and how it's a
great model that works for everyone - I'll assume the good folks of
Fedora have already researched many different models. Instead, what
I'm going to talk about is the feasibility and the logistics.
It seems that Fuduntu can get together with Fedora by putting up a
proposal and leading the effort. I don't see why not since you have a
bunch of people already doing something. Seems like you guys would or
should have the technical know how.
Rahul
12:12 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Noah Hall <noah.hall(a)fuduntu.org> wrote:
Fuduntu Dev here.
One question for you with your Fuduntu Dev hat on.
Is Fuduntu is still using a Gnome 2 derived desktop experience?
Assuming that is true. And please correct me if it is not. Can you
point me to any documentation or any archived discussion where the
Fuduntu Dev team have decided on how they are going to transition
users of the rolling release to Gnome 3 if that transition every
happens?
-jef
4:17 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/28/2012 07:42 PM, Noah Hall wrote:
Fuduntu Dev here.
...
Fuduntu didn't start out as a rolling release. We had versions
for a
while, until we realised we were basically releasing newer snapshots
of our current software with slightly different defaults.
Having discussed it as a team, we decided to move to rolling - less
work for us to handle the repos and create images, less hassle for our
users to reinstall with each release just because we'd changed some
default package or updated something vital to a newer version. Our
users could just update, and we could just create images. Simples.
The transition was painless. I can't say I noticed much fallout, if
any. Perhaps fewt can remember some, but I can't. Our distro is pretty
stable, with new software - something that's a treat in the Linux
world.
The argument against rolling upgrades is that it's a wonderful idea
early on, but then you run into a morass as time goes on, because of:
- difficulty of handling wanted vs. unwanted updates, which in turn
creates combinatorially growing number of config permutations (Gnome 3
yes, GCC 4.7 no, KDE 3 no , kernel 3.x yes, etc.)
- cruft resulting from rolling upgrades trying to preserve old
customizations and 'old way of doing things', as opposed to installing
latest shiny stuff from scratch
In other words, you have to wait a while and think long term to truly
evaluate a rolling upgrade. You have just started, and things are going
swimmingly for now, but the clouds are gathering.
I believe that the problem with the current system is lack of long term
support, i.e. what happens on the trailing, rather than the leading,
edge of upgrades. I can afford doing manual upgrades to the systems
under active development. It's the working, stable systems that I don't
want to touch, but obviously I need security and other essential updates.
To solve that, I'd be nice if there was a way to roll over an EOL
version into an appropriate release of one of the long-term-supported
systems such as RHEL, Centos or Scientific Linux. Without this option,
it's hard to deploy Fedora in a long term fire-and forget capacity,
because I know that every one of them will require manual upgrade or
rebuild when it goes EOL---if not for technical reasons, then because a
lot of places, right or wrong, have a policy requiring currently
supported software. It's a pity because otherwise Fedora is an
excellent, reliable system capable of such long-term operation.
4:51 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/30/2012 05:17 PM, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
The argument against rolling upgrades is that it's a wonderful idea
early on, but then you run into a morass as time goes on, because of:
- difficulty of handling wanted vs. unwanted updates, which in turn
creates combinatorially growing number of config permutations (Gnome 3
yes, GCC 4.7 no, KDE 3 no , kernel 3.x yes, etc.)
- cruft resulting from rolling upgrades trying to preserve old
customizations and 'old way of doing things', as opposed to installing
latest shiny stuff from scratch
In other words, you have to wait a while and think long term to truly
evaluate a rolling upgrade. You have just started, and things are going
swimmingly for now, but the clouds are gathering.
To some extent yes - on the other hand, one can always re-install a
rolling release using the latest install snapshot - so in that sense a
rolling release contains a periodic release as a special case anyway ...
gene
6:55 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
Przemek Klosowski wrote:
To solve that, I'd be nice if there was a way to roll over an
EOL
version into an appropriate release of one of the long-term-supported
systems such as RHEL, Centos or Scientific Linux.
This is impossible due to how the Fedora and RHEL releases align, and it is
impossible to change that given RHEL's QA requirements.
When an RHEL release m based on Fedora n gets released, Fedora has long
since moved on: Not only will Fedora n+1 be either already out or around the
corner (and thus likely out by the time CentOS releases), but even Fedora n
updates will now contain packages newer than RHEL m! (Heck, even Fedora n-1
updates will!) RHEL does not include all the post-release version upgrades
of the Fedora version it's based on. Some packages in RHEL m might even be
newer than in Fedora n (backported from Fedora n+1 or even n+2), but others
will be older, and never get upgraded in the lifetime of RHEL m. (RHEL's
update policy is, by design, much more conservative than Fedora's, even the
new one.)
So it is not possible to move from Fedora to RHEL (or equivalent) without
downgrading some packages, and I don't see any way to change this. (It
definitely can't be changed on the Fedora side. It could theoretically be
changed on the RHEL side by backporting all the version upgrades from Fedora
n into RHEL m, but I don't think that would fit the RHEL customers'
requirements, so I don't see Red Hat allowing that, ever.)
Kevin Kofler
9:36 a.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/30/2012 07:55 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
Przemek Klosowski wrote:
> To solve that, I'd be nice if there was a way to roll over an EOL
> version into an appropriate release of one of the long-term-supported
> systems such as RHEL, Centos or Scientific Linux.
This is impossible due to how the Fedora and RHEL releases align, and it is
impossible to change that given RHEL's QA requirements.
...
So it is not possible to move from Fedora to RHEL (or equivalent)
without
downgrading some packages, and I don't see any way to change this. (It
definitely can't be changed on the Fedora side.
The downgrades would actually be better than having an unsupported
system that doesn't get any updates ever. The assumption here is that
the downgrades aren't introducing any security or fundamental
functionality issues--hopefully, 'long term support' means that they
would fix such problems.
In other words, consider an EOL Fedora system that for some reason can't
be upgraded/rebuilt to the latest release. In order to maintain such
system one has to follow every installed package and keep cherry-picking
relevant critical updates, in order to manually build and install custom
packages.
The alternative you describe would mean some temporary pain resulting
from this 'slight downgrade rollover' that is hopefully much less than a
complete reinstall After that, the system would be on automatic updates,
so it wouldn't require constant supervision.
Naturally, one could still cherry-pick a specific later version and
build/install its package, if there were some specific issues with
specific packages---much less of a burden.
I will look around and see if I had a candidate to try this method on. I
think the yum-only upgrade method should work for this!
Thanks for the idea
przemek
9:45 a.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 10:36:32AM -0500, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
The downgrades would actually be better than having an unsupported
system that doesn't get any updates ever. The assumption here is that
the downgrades aren't introducing any security or fundamental
functionality issues--hopefully, 'long term support' means that they
would fix such problems.
If people can live with RHEL/CentOS/SL' "older" packages *and* need LTS,
why would they *ever* start using Fedora anyway (when they know they
have to move to RHEL/CentOS/SL at some point anyway).
Sorry, this is really a *very* weird scenario.
--
-- Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl>
-- X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364
-- Amsterdam, The Netherlands | Fax: +31 20 6948204
10:26 a.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/31/2012 10:45 AM, Jos Vos wrote:
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 10:36:32AM -0500, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
> The downgrades would actually be better than having an unsupported
> system that doesn't get any updates ever. The assumption here is that
> the downgrades aren't introducing any security or fundamental
> functionality issues--hopefully, 'long term support' means that they
> would fix such problems.
If people can live with RHEL/CentOS/SL' "older" packages *and* need LTS,
why would they *ever* start using Fedora anyway (when they know they
have to move to RHEL/CentOS/SL at some point anyway).
Sorry, this is really a *very* weird scenario.
I don't think it is weird at all. Look at the deployment lifecycle:
Fedora provides the most recent software, so it makes perfect sense to
deploy it on new systems. Why settle for the old stuff?
At the same time, if the deployment is successful, we're no longer
chasing the latest features, and the stability becomes paramount---the
good is the enemy of the best. For a while, Fedora allows us to coast on
such a running system, but then we're caught by the EOL.
What do you do with your Fedora systems deployed long-term? update them
as soon as new version comes up? leave them running? don't use Fedora
for the long term?
2:26 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:26:49AM -0500, Przemek Klosowski wrote:
At the same time, if the deployment is successful, we're no
longer
chasing the latest features, and the stability becomes paramount---the
good is the enemy of the best. For a while, Fedora allows us to coast on
such a running system, but then we're caught by the EOL.
As explained earlier, at Fxx EOL, the newest RHEL software is older
than the Fxx software, so this not make much sense.
What do you do with your Fedora systems deployed long-term? update
them
as soon as new version comes up? leave them running? don't use Fedora
for the long term?
Yes, Fedora is not for long term if updates/security are an issue.
Period.
--
-- Jos Vos <jos(a)xos.nl>
-- X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364
-- Amsterdam, The Netherlands | Fax: +31 20 6948204
11:38 a.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
Przemek Klosowski wrote:
The downgrades would actually be better than having an unsupported
system that doesn't get any updates ever. The assumption here is that
the downgrades aren't introducing any security or fundamental
functionality issues--hopefully, 'long term support' means that they
would fix such problems.
Well, then you can try migrating with yum distro-sync and it will do the
required downgrades, but such an option will never be officially supported
by anybody because package downgrades aren't officially supported in the
first place. (Fedora doesn't support it, some upstreams also don't support
it, and e.g. config files from the new version might no longer work with the
old one.)
Kevin Kofler
3:27 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
* Przemek Klosowski [31/01/2012 00:37] :
To solve that, I'd be nice if there was a way to roll over an EOL
version into an appropriate release of one of the
long-term-supported systems such as RHEL, Centos or Scientific
Linux.
This would be a massive distraction from our mission.
Get the $FOO people to cover migrations from other distributions to $FOO.
The Fedora people should only be concerned with migrations to Fedora, not
from it.
12:20 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On 01/31/2012 04:27 PM, Emmanuel Seyman wrote:
* Przemek Klosowski [31/01/2012 00:37] :
>
> To solve that, I'd be nice if there was a way to roll over an EOL
> version into an appropriate release of one of the
> long-term-supported systems such as RHEL, Centos or Scientific
> Linux.
This would be a massive distraction from our mission.
Get the $FOO people to cover migrations from other distributions to $FOO.
The Fedora people should only be concerned with migrations to Fedora, not
from it.
Precisely---but lack of the EOL path sometimes prevents use of Fedora in
the first place. Jon Vos said elsewhere in this discussion that "Fedora
is not for long term if updates/security are an issue. Period."
I am just trying to explore if there's a way around that.
12:35 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On Wed, Feb 01, 2012 at 13:20:58 -0500,
Przemek Klosowski <przemek.klosowski(a)nist.gov> wrote:
Precisely---but lack of the EOL path sometimes prevents use of
Fedora in the first place. Jon Vos said elsewhere in this discussion
that "Fedora is not for long term if updates/security are an issue.
Period."
I am just trying to explore if there's a way around that.
A lot of people need to step up and do the work. So far no one has been
able to successfully organize a group to do it. And given Fedora is more likely
to attract people who want to run the latest and (hopefully) greatest stuff,
I would expect finding a lot of people who want to support old Fedora releases
is going to be difficult.
1:33 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
2012/2/1 Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to>:
A lot of people need to step up and do the work. So far no one has
been
able to successfully organize a group to do it. And given Fedora is more likely
to attract people who want to run the latest and (hopefully) greatest stuff,
I would expect finding a lot of people who want to support old Fedora releases
is going to be difficult.
--
+1
Too bad I do not have the experience necessary to take the first step,
but when this group is created, I'll be happy to help in anyway I can.
--
Henrique "LonelySpooky" Junior
3:06 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
* Przemek Klosowski [01/02/2012 19:58] :
I am just trying to explore if there's a way around that.
The answer is the same on this subject and the rolling release:
You need to get a group together, put together a set of specifications
that everybody agrees on and start working on making it happen.
If nobody is willing to do this, nothing is going to happen.
Emmanuel
5:23 p.m.
New subject: Rolling release Fedora - fantastic idea
On Sat, 2012-01-28 at 23:26 +0000, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
I do not thing it is worthwhile for them to do so. There may already
be a document somewhere on the wiki on this topic. It will never be
found because since the day mediawiki was rolled out there has not
been a usable search.
There certainly is, it's just outsourced:
google "search term" site:fedoraproject.org/wiki
works fine. :)
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net
4461
days inactive
4465
days old
18 comments
13 participants
participants (13)
-
Adam Williamson -
Bruno Wolff III -
Emmanuel Seyman -
Genes MailLists -
Henrique Junior -
Jef Spaleta -
Jos Vos -
Kevin Kofler -
Noah Hall -
Orion Poplawski -
Przemek Klosowski -
Rahul Sundaram -
Robert 'Bob' Jensen