LWN: Comments on "Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)"

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

cjwatson — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:11:29 +0000

The plan of record for Ubuntu 10.04 is to attempt to sync *freeze* dates as closely as possible with Debian Squeeze; it would always have been very difficult to sync *release* dates with Debian Squeeze, and any early suggestion there may have been of doing so (I can't honestly remember, and am not going to go back and check at this point) would have been amended pretty quickly during discussions. Since Lucid's feature freeze is scheduled for 18 February (and we have the option of pulling more things in after that), I'd hardly say that we're talking a huge amount of skew here against a prospective Debian freeze in March.

Since the team in Ubuntu tasked with making this work includes two former Debian release managers, we're pretty familiar with what's involved here.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

jcm — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:57:51 +0000

Absolutely. In my personal opinion, distributions have gone nuts with time based releases in recent years to the detriment of longer term progress. It would be far better if we said there will be one release per year roughly and when it's ready, than the way things are done now. But that's just my opinion.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

jcm — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:55:31 +0000

Oh, don't forget to mention: Cadence, cadence cadence! :P

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

rfunk — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:59:32 +0000

I can't speak for Canonical, but the usual way to make time-based releases
work is to drop features if they can't be done in time, and revert to known-
stable versions of things if bugs in later versions become a problem.

Professional software developers *always* have time constraints, and many
professional developers have adopted the use of monthly minor releases
("iterations") to keep their projects on track, so it's not like this is a
new or unknown issue.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

dlang — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:42:24 +0000

how you do time based releases is that if a new version of a package is not ready when the release data rolls around, you revert to an older version.

trying to hold a release until there are no known bugs means that you will release software that is so old that nobody will use it.

even debian stable (one of the most conservative releases around) doesn't kjust wait for there to be no bugs left, they get to a point where they remove or revert packages that have release critical bugs in them, and accept the fact that some packages will have non release-critial bugs in them.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

jschrod — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:41:08 +0000

??? The LWN text starts with "the headline overstates the commitment", and thus makes it clear -- if one knows the style of our editors -- that this is a wish.

Would have wanted to have your own article referenced here, don't ya? Too bad that the H writing brought the relevant Ubuntu issue more to the point, for a citation it was more succinct. Oh yes, and maybe get an LWN subscription some time.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

pboddie — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:32:18 +0000

Can you explain to me how time based released are supposed to work? How can anyone guarantee that all important bugs have been fixed by a certain date? This is absurd.

Indeed. Although a commitment to releasing something in a certain timeframe can be beneficial when determining priorities, a slavish adherence to time-based releases ("We must make a new release on exactly this date or our partners/customers/users will be so disappointed/angry!") typically involves rushed implementation, skipped quality assurance and unhappy partners/customers/users. It's the curse of software developers in many an environment where some manager has expressed the intention to copy such fashionable tendencies in order to re-assert some perceived but inconsequential notion of relevance.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

BenHutchings — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:13:09 +0000

Your hypocrisy is stunning.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

dpotapov — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:16:23 +0000

Considering how conservative Debian is, the postpone of code freeze will likely result in more key packages having the same version in Debian and the Ubuntu LTS.

Also, third parties tend to release their software for Ubuntu LTS, thus having slightly newer version of some packages than in the Ubuntu LTS is better for Debian than having them slightly older.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

mikov — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:18:03 +0000

Can you explain to me how time based released are supposed to work? How can anyone guarantee that all important bugs have been fixed by a certain date? This is absurd.

I have no doubt that a major reason for Ubuntu's low quality lies in their time-based release schedule. What is worse, 6 months is a complete joke for a serious software release, let alone a whole OS distribution.

I am extremely happy that Debian doesn't have time-based releases, and that it has a long release period. I sincerely hope it never copies the worse of Ubuntu's mistakes.

Report said Ubuntu LTS would take "Testing" as input instead of "Unstable"

branden — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:21:29 +0000

One might almost say that Mark Shuttleworth's mind "is an entire world
unto itself. Nothing really exists outside of it. Or if it does, it does
so in a highly abstract form."

Report said Ubuntu LTS would take "Testing" as input instead of "Unstable"

jspaleta — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:43:29 +0000

You should listen to Shuttleworth's pitch for distro syncing in the LinuxCon keynote he made. Or go back and read his posts in the Debian list trying to explain his vision of the benefits of syncing.

Shuttleworth's public argument is that multiple distro syncing would benefit upstream project development as it would be a more efficient use of limited manpower. Which is a very interesting argument for the CEO of Canonical to make considering he's not really putting any engineering manpower into the kernel or any of the important plumbing layers like X.

And I've yet to come across an upstream developer of note who works on the kernel or associated plumbing who has spoken out in support of Shuttleworth's metacycle idea from an active upstream developer's perspective. I can't even cite Canonical employee who has backed him up in an upstream project specific mailinglist or other publicly archived medium.

Until upstream project development teams start making it a point to request/demand distributions collectively use specific versions all of this syncing stuff is just a lot of hot air. And I don't see any evidence at all that upstream project development teams are buying into Shuttleworth's vision of a multi-year development metacycle for core components.

-jef

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

foom — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:56:26 +0000

> Didn't he offer just that? And I guess they rejected it. The Debian community craves drama
> more than help, don't you think? There are already far too many cooks in the Debian kitchen.

It seems to me that the referenced article has made it seem as if there's Drama where there actually
is none.

Debian is a collection of individuals. As such, if bunch of individuals employed by Canonical wanted
to do work on Debian, they certainly would not be rejected.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

sbergman27 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:29:28 +0000

"""
If Canonical wants to synchronize with Debian, they can. They just need to pay some more
engineers to work on it,
"""

Didn't he offer just that? And I guess they rejected it. The Debian community craves drama
more than help, don't you think? There are already far too many cooks in the Debian kitchen.

Report said Ubuntu LTS would take "Testing" as input instead of "Unstable"

roblucid — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:41:57 +0000

Gist of it was, Ubuntu 10.04 needs to be a solid release; what's the point of "time based" release if it's total crap until 2 months later and needs re-mastering?

So if Ubuntu does sync up with Testing, rather than Unstable; then Ubuntu LTS 10.04 can actually release first, yet contain similar packages to Squeeze, even if it's released later.

Presumably Shuttleworth would like to use same kernel as Fedora, SuSE & Mandriva releases to benefit from the other distro's significant kernel teams. Probably Ubuntu is out of sync, with the kernel stable team, perhaps Ubuntu would have sync-ed better with a November LTS release, so everyone can break their new toy over christmas.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

samuel679 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:00:31 +0000

It's funny that whoever posted this never thought of referring to the source - the original article which I wrote.

Steve McIntyre only said that the project was looking at a freeze in March. He indulged in some wishful thinking about a summer release.

But then why would LWN bother about going to the source and getting its facts right? Silly me.

Sam Varghese

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

Alterego — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:23:24 +0000

If Canonical wants to synchronize with Debian, they can.
They just need to pay some more engineers to work on it, and release an LTS lets say 3 monthes after a Debian stable release, with the exact same base server stuff. This would be rock solid ubuntu.

So far i prefer the debian way to release when things are in good shape, instead of crazy new bogus stuff in Ubuntu (upstart not waiting for fsck bug resurfacing in karmic ...)

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

gravious — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:13:47 +0000

Way to update Plato's Allegory of the Cave for the Common Linux Era.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

sbergman27 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:56:21 +0000

"""
Since most people in the Debian community don't seem to be bothered by the
preference of feature-based over time-based releases then it should not
surprise anybody that Debian is remaining difficult for 3rd parties to work
with.
"""

The Debian community is an entire world unto itself. Nothing really exists outside of it. Or if
it does, it does so in a highly abstract form.

If I may be allowed to shamelessly paraphrase from Wikipedia:

Imagine the Debian release team in a cave. Behind the them is an enormous fire, and
between the fire and the release manager is a raised walkway, along which people walk
carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of wood, stone
and other materials". The prisoners can only watch the shadows cast by the men (and
women!), not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the noise
produced from the walkway.

Is it not reasonable that the would take the shadows to be real things and the echoes to be
real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had ever seen or heard?
Wouldn't they praise as clever whoever could best guess which shadow would come next,
as someone who understood the nature of the world? And wouldn't the whole of their
society depend on the shadows on the wall?

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

drag — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:36:20 +0000

Yeah.. If Debian had the ability to release versions in a timely manner then
there would of been no need for Ubuntu in the first place.

Since most people in the Debian community don't seem to be bothered by the
preference of feature-based over time-based releases then it should not
surprise anybody that Debian is remaining difficult for 3rd parties to work
with. Hopefully this is something that Debian can improve on in the future,
but it's going to take a long long time.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

sbergman27 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:42:13 +0000

And since Debian's kernel versions tend to be quite old at the time of GA, the danger here
would be in the Debian kernel being *earlier* than the Ubuntu LTS one.

Seriously, that's the most common reason for Debian failing to install when I go to test it. It's
why Lenny failed. A SATA driver that went into the kernel the previous summer was not in the
kernel version released by Debian in February.

No sane distro release team would ever consider actually trying to synchronize releases with
Debian Stable. That way lies madness.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

BenHutchings — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:36:11 +0000

My understanding is that Canonical's policy for Ubuntu 'lucid' is to synchronise with Debian 'squeeze' for most upstream versions (and packaging, so far as possible), not just the kernel.

Debian 6.0 Squeeze to be released in summer 2010 (The H)

Ed_L. — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:55:37 +0000

Just as clarification, as I understand it and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, Shuttleworth's suggestion was for Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS to synchronize on the same kernel version (RHEL, SUSE, and Mandriva too, if possible), not necessarily on the same release month.