Debian to adopt time-based releases [LWN.net]

From:		Meike Reichle <meike-AT-debian.org>
To:		debian-announce-AT-lists.debian.org
Subject:		Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes
Date:		Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:08:02 +0200
Message-ID:		<20090729010802.GA29421@melusine.alphascorpii.net>
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

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The Debian Project                                 http://www.debian.org/
Debian adopts time-based release freezes                 press@debian.org
July 29th, 2009                  http://www.debian.org/News/2009/20090729
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Debian decides to adopt time-based release freezes

The Debian project has decided to adopt a new policy of time-based
development freezes for future releases, on a two-year cycle. Freezes
will from now on happen in the December of every odd year, which means
that releases will from now on happen sometime in the first half of every
even year.  To that effect the next freeze will happen in December 2009,
with a release expected in spring 2010. The project chose December as a
suitable freeze date since spring releases proved successful for the
releases of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed "Etch") and Debian GNU/Linux
5.0 ("Lenny").

Time-based freezes will allow the Debian Project to blend the
predictability of time based releases with its well established policy of
feature based releases. The new freeze policy will provide better
predictability of releases for users of the Debian distribution, and also
allow Debian developers to do better long-term planning.  A two-year
release cycle will give more time for disruptive changes, reducing
inconveniences caused for users. Having predictable freezes should also
reduce overall freeze time.

Since Debian's last release happened on Feb. 14th 2009, there will only
be approximately a one year period until its next release, Debian
GNU/Linux 6.0 (codenamed "Squeeze").  This will be a one-time exception
to the two-year policy in order to get into the new time schedule. To
accommodate the needs of larger organisations and other users with a long
upgrade process, the Debian project commits to provide the possibility to
skip the upcoming release and do a skip-upgrade straight from Debian
GNU/Linux 5.0 ("Lenny") to Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 (not yet codenamed).

Although the next freeze is only a short time away, the Debian project
hopes to achieve several prominent goals with it. The most important are
multi-arch support, which will improve the installation of 32 bit
packages on 64 bit machines, and an optimised boot process for better
boot performance and reliability. 

The new freeze policy was proposed and agreed during the Debian Project's
yearly conference, DebConf, which is currently taking place in Caceres,
Spain. The idea was well received among the attending project members. 


About Debian
------------

The Debian Project is an association of Free Software developers who
volunteer their time and effort in order to produce the completely free
operating system Debian GNU/Linux.


Contact Information
-------------------

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at
<http://www.debian.org/>, send mail to <press@debian.org>, or contact the
stable release team at <debian-release@lists.debian.org>

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Debian to adopt time-based releases

Posted Jul 29, 2009 17:29 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

WTF? This makes *no* sense.

1) Aiming for a release every 18 months (which was the previous plan, if I'm not mistaken?? Also a
time based schedule!) seemed pretty good time scale.It always slipped a bit, of course.
2) Why did they choose the odd years instead of the even years?? If they had chosen even years,
then the next release would have been 2 years out and would not have had to be special.

....

Oh. I guess Ubuntu has taken over Debian. Ubuntu LTS releases are every 2 years. Next Ubuntu LTS
is going to be in April of next year. So Debian has now set things up so that its releases are
perfectly timed for creating a less buggy Ubuntu release.

Not impressed.

Debian to adopt time-based releases

Posted Jul 29, 2009 18:18 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

It makes all the sense in the world to me.

Getting Debian in sync with Ubuntu and putting it on a strong time-based release means that both projects can reduce the amount of effort it takes to produce a 'stable' release since they are working on it together.

It increases the ability for users to depend on and plan around Debian as well as reduce the amount of change that Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros need to do on their own to keep up with new software releases and hardware support.

Debian to adopt time-based releases

Posted Jul 30, 2009 13:38 UTC (Thu) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

I still don't see that it's going to help Debian.

Debian has been using time-based release schedules for at least a couple releases now. That is not actually new. E.g. here (2007-06-16) is the annoucement of the schedule for lenny, including dates when it would freeze. Which happened right on time. Now, obviously, the release slipped a bit: it took longer to stabilize than people hoped for, but this plan can't (and doesn't propose to) nail down the timing of the release, only the freeze. To say that now users have a more dependable schedule than before is not actually true.

Okay, so what does Debian get out of the deal? The hope is certainly that it will get cooperation from the Ubuntu developers, who could work on everything upstream in Debian and flow that into Ubuntu, rather than working on Ubuntu-specific improvements. Which would of course result in both the Debian and Ubuntu releases being higher quality with less effort. If that actually does happen, it will indeed be good for everyone...although I don't believe Debian should have messed up their release timeline so drastically in order to make this happen.

But, my feeling is that's unlikely. What I expect to happen is that Canonical devs will be busy with their own distinctive release features instead and not help much with the Debian bugs -- especially since many Debian bugs are in packages Ubuntu doesn't officially support. Furthermore, they will be able to diverge even further from Debian due to Debian being in essentially an already releasable state at the time of Ubuntu's release.

Then there are some unavoidable downsides for Debian:
1) Their security team has more work to do (need to support 3 versions simultaneously instead of 2 this time)
2) More work to ensure upgrading skipping a version works this time
3) Unexpectedly little time to finish the current release
4) Increased time-between-releases from previously-chosen 18-month target.

And upsides for Ubuntu:
1) Better quality release of the essentially-untested-in-Ubuntu "universe" components, by basing it off a almost-stable debian packages instead of unstable debian packages.
2) There will never be a point in time where a Debian release is shinier/newer than an Ubuntu release, and people who like shiny might be tempted to try Debian for the first time and stay.

Debian to adopt time-based releases

Posted Jul 29, 2009 18:41 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Sidenote:

I really wish the LWN.net comment system would do soft-wrapping on "Plain Text" mode comments
instead of hard wrapping...it's quite hard to read text which has been wrapped twice in diferent
locations.

Perhaps just removing wrap="physical" on the textbox would fix it?

Debian to adopt time-based releases

Posted Jul 30, 2009 12:07 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

Yes, it would be so much better to just boost one's (distro's) own ego even if both distros would suffer ("at least Ubuntu suffers as well, right what those forking bastards deserve!"), instead of co-operating so that both distros benefit and prosper.

It's clear that this decision is good for Debian, so it's also not a surprise it was made.