From Fedora Project Wiki
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== Present lifecycle == | == Present lifecycle == | ||
{{admon/note||Fill in definitions and have jkeating review for accuracy}} | |||
* Rawhide | * Rawhide | ||
* Alpha | * Alpha | ||
* Beta | * Beta | ||
* Preview | |||
* Release/F-Current | |||
* F-(Current-1) | |||
* F-(Current-2) | |||
* EOL -- from the yum update numbers, EOL is a reasonably active time for users even though there isn't any further development for maintainers. | |||
== Proposals == | == Proposals == |
Revision as of 21:38, 27 February 2010
This page is a start at defining expectations for updating packages within the release. It's current aim is to document what people want, what we have now, and making proposals in how to change what we have now to satisfy more people more of the time.
Update styles
These are the update styles that people have expressed as wanting.
- Rolling
- Semi-rolling
- QA'd -- This is a large category that we may want to break into further subdivisions. It includes forcing updates to go through updates-testing first, forcing updates through low risk
- Critical bugfix-only
Additional Considerations
Present lifecycle
- Rawhide
- Alpha
- Beta
- Preview
- Release/F-Current
- F-(Current-1)
- F-(Current-2)
- EOL -- from the yum update numbers, EOL is a reasonably active time for users even though there isn't any further development for maintainers.
Proposals
Because that comes with some types of disruptive changes which we do not perform in releases and which I do not advocate performing in releases. Rolling releases like Rawhide, Debian unstable, Gentoo etc. have no set points to do disruptive changes. So e.g. you wake up in the morning and your system no longer boots because your kernel upgrade from yesterday enabled libata and you had hd* hardcoded in some place. (Yes, I know that particular change is now a done deal, but there will definitely be similar changes in the future.) As I have explained several times, AIUI, a stable release MUST NOT get upgrades which "break things", e.g.: * require manual adjustment to config files, databases etc., * break support for existing user data (documents, configuration, savegames etc.), * knowingly introduce regressions, * remove features, * radically change the UI (but I don't think minor changes like a menu entry moving to a different place are a serious issue), * bump the soname of a core library on which dozens of packages depend (but I don't personally see a grouped update with a soname change and a rebuild of ALL packages using that library as a problem as long as it's only for a few packages), * change the API of a library in a way that existing applications using it fail to rebuild and cannot easily be fixed (in fact soname bumps MUST be accompanied by rebuilds of everything affected) etc. (and I think we all agree there. But that's why Rawhide is not the answer!), but IMHO (and there opinions differ), it SHOULD get upgrades which: * fix bugs, even if they're not critical or security, * introduce features in a non-disruptive, backwards-compatible way (e.g. there's now a new menu entry which does something cool, at worst that new menu entry might not work perfectly, but it shouldn't affect anything else).