Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 14, 2012 22:53 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Calling for a new openSUSE development model by drag
Parent article: Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Unless, couldn't you sort-of copy Debian?

Let's say you do six-month releases, then you roll for five like Sid or Cooker, then you do a feature freeze and a mad one-month bug-fest. Then you could "name and shame" :-) if people aren't fixing blocking bugs, and anything that's not a bug fix is simply "come back for the next release".

I know it's not necessarily the best solution, but it's a bit of an obvious one. Says me who runs gentoo :-) but SuSE is my distro of choice when I'm supporting other people.

Cheers,
Wol

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Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 15, 2012 0:20 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (5 responses)

> Unless, couldn't you sort-of copy Debian?

Debian is infamous for poor release management. This is one of the major reasons for the popularity of Ubuntu. They do good quality when it finally releases, but I don't think it's a good model to follow.

The best idea I can think up is to just piggy back on Fedora and concentrate on developing what makes OpenSuse special.

Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 15, 2012 1:46 UTC (Fri) by miguelzinho (guest, #40535) [Link] (4 responses)

Ubuntu does good quality releases and Debian has poor release management?

I'm sorry but my experience is completely the opposite. I have been screwed many times by buggy Ubuntu packages when using a new release early that I've have adopted a Windows user mindset to wait a few weeks to get updated packages after a release, because they will fix a lot of untested and postponed bugs thanks to the release deadline.

OTOH with Debian I do not recall having any serious problems when using an early release at all.

Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 15, 2012 7:26 UTC (Fri) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link] (3 responses)

> Ubuntu does good quality releases and Debian has poor release management?

I believe drag's "They do good quality when it finally releases" comment is aimed at Debian, not Ubuntu.

> OTOH with Debian I do not recall having any serious problems when using an early release at all.

One Debian release (sarge? etch?) was respinned within 24hours of its release. Sarge was delayed time and time again leaving people who needed stability stuck on etch for years.

Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 15, 2012 13:12 UTC (Fri) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

> I believe drag's "They do good quality when it finally releases" comment is aimed at Debian, not Ubuntu.

Yes. That is correct.

> One Debian release (sarge? etch?) was respinned within 24hours of its release. Sarge was delayed time and time again leaving people who needed stability stuck on etch for years.

I've used Debian for many years and enjoyed taking advantage of the package management system to do some very crazy stuff. It's nice and flexible. Very useful.

But in terms of release management is that the timing is undependable. It's very difficult to use Debian if you must coordinated with other people in a large infrastructure when the best estimation you can come up with in terms of a release is 'well, maybe next year'.

Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jun 15, 2012 13:18 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

The last several releases were fairly predictable (about 1 release every 2 years). It's the same with RHEL, btw.

Calling for a new openSUSE development model

Posted Jul 4, 2012 21:48 UTC (Wed) by zack (subscriber, #7062) [Link]

> Sarge was delayed time and time again leaving people who needed stability stuck on etch for years.

That was 2005, 7 years ago. I wonder how long a Free Software distro should be held accountable for something like that.

Now look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Release_history and take the average of release cycle duration for releases since then. It's 22.6 months, with a very low variance, and it's been like that for 7 years.

That might not match the definition of "time-based release", but it's pretty reliable if you ask me.