I have been doing some thinking about Redhat's (And mandrake and SuSE) release cycles. It was especially with reference to projects such as Fedora, which aim to provide high quality third party packages for Redhat. Are these not being stifled by the release cycles. If these projects are going to make a commitment to quality, the short release cycles shall surely hurt them. After a while, you can imagine that they will begin to ignore older releases, and leaving some people with the option to either upgrade (Not usually a great option) or remain outdated and without a source of decent third party packages.
Is Redhat working with these efforts in any direct way through maybe hardware purchases, paying people to actually package some of the software etc. I imagine this could be a chance for Redhat to actually shed some of its responsibility to provide these packages, and have this volunteer effort actually become the "official: third party source for packages and updates.
But most importantly, how does the release schedule affect a project like Fedora. Maybe I just need to understand. Also it may be nice to include the Fedora repository and pre-configured apt/yum packages so that users could be good to go after installing. This though would entail giving Fedora packages for their repository as soon as the iso's are released.
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On Sun, 03 Aug 2003 18:09:14 +0200, Maynard Kuona wrote:
I have been doing some thinking about Redhat's (And mandrake and SuSE) release cycles. It was especially with reference to projects such as Fedora, which aim to provide high quality third party packages for Redhat. Are these not being stifled by the release cycles. If these projects are going to make a commitment to quality, the short release cycles shall surely hurt them.
Everything's a question of how much man power is available. And then there are different levels of quality. Packaging software into RPM and making sure each package builds and installs fine is one thing. Enhancing packages (with initscripts, default configs, fixes) and making sure the packages integrate smoothly into Red Hat Linux is another thing. An additional level of quality assurance would be to test-drive the packages extensively. Since Fedora Linux is a community project, all that can be done only if there are enough people who help. This includes users who report bugs, of course.
After a while, you can imagine that they will begin to ignore older releases, and leaving some people with the option to either upgrade (Not usually a great option) or remain outdated and without a source of decent third party packages.
If none of the packagers and neither contributors find the time and or resources to test packages on the older distributions, it is clear that support for the old distributions is phased out.
Besides major resource problems, the biggest problem with distributions getting out-of-date is, that new software releases no longer build unless you would upgrade core packages. As soon as you touch core packages, however, it becomes a major effort to verify and upgrade a whole chain of dependencies. That would be like duplicating Red Hat's work. The user could as well upgrade the entire distribution.
Is Redhat working with these efforts in any direct way through maybe hardware purchases, paying people to actually package some of the software etc. I imagine this could be a chance for Redhat to actually shed some of its responsibility to provide these packages, and have this volunteer effort actually become the "official: third party source for packages and updates.
One thing for sure, there exist common goals and opportunities. But I seriously think it is way to early for both Fedora and the Red Hat Linux Project to discuss something like this on a rhl-beta list. We should all wait and see what Red Hat has in the queue with regard to their more open development model.
But most importantly, how does the release schedule affect a project like Fedora. Maybe I just need to understand.
Currently, Fedora does not do any releases, but keeps the repository updated fluently. The repository for the "Severn" beta is filled as problems are fixed or new packages are made available. It is not expected that the final version of Cambridge will differ much from the last beta version. So, all that can be done by Fedora is preparing and testing packages for the next release by keeping them in sync with the beta versions and/or Raw Hide.
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