LWN: Comments on "Can Fedora Ship on Time?"

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

drago01 — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:27:16 +0000

No it is not amateur at all. How is slipping ONE OR TWO WEEKS because we found an undressed bug is being "amateur" ?

Amateur would be if we keep slipping with no end in sight "one more week, one more week, one more month" or if we ignored the bug and said "but but the deadline is in 2 days we have to ship on time".

That being said yeah it does make sense to try to avoid that "last minute bugs" but when they happen (and they will sometimes) it isn't the end of the world like some are viewing it.

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

mmcgrath — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:52:08 +0000

I should be more clear here. Trying to force a deadline is only part of the problem. You're looking at the deadline as the problem and generally it's not.

Missing a deadline is a symptom of the problem:

1) Changes get made later in the cycle instead earlier.
2) We try to cram too much stuff into a release

The stance that slipping is a feature opposed to just forcing a deadline would be true if people if people were arguing for forcing a deadline but AFAIK no one is. What the discussion is about is how to fix 1 and 2 above so we make the deadline naturally.

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

mmcgrath — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:39:56 +0000

Because in the real world we're expected to set and keep deadlines. Anything less then that is amateur.

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

drago01 — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:13:09 +0000

The fact that we slip is a *feature* IMO not a bug. Whats the point in trying to force a deadline and provide less features or more bugs for the sake of avoiding a one or two week slip?

None? OK so nothing to see here move on ...

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

jspaleta — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:55:39 +0000

That could be argued that normally yes the month is the publicly communicated target for final release. But I think they have hard dates inside the process they shoot for, so you'd have to do an historic analysis of those interior dates.

For 10.10 they are specifically trying to hit 10.10 as a release date.

-jef

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

smoogen — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:27:54 +0000

Doesn't Ubuntu have a whole month to hit its target? That might work better for Fedora too.. instead of saying that the release will be October 15th, 2010.. it says October 2010 but try to hit October 1st and slip til October 30th. [If I am misunderstanding the Ubuntu schedule.. my apologies in advance.]

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

jspaleta — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:26:34 +0000

Apples to oranges comparison..or is it an blueberry to eggplant comparison.

Ubuntu's time based development model strongly leverages Debian's much looser development model. It could be argued that the very loose development model that Debian has is a pre-condition for Ubuntu to exist at all. You really can't hold up Ubuntu's development model by itself as a workable model in-and-of-itself. To understand the how's and why's of the Ubuntu workflow, you have to incorporate Debian's development model as Ubuntu is a derived distribution which rebases from Debian.

-jef

Can Fedora Ship on Time?

jengelh — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:49:52 +0000

Well if every release slips, they once again align nicely :-)

>it wouldn't "stop people trying to cram fixes/changes in at the last minute."

Strange. The kernel has a working stoppage model. (Linus and the "1-week" merge window.)

>Fedora's relatively short lifecycle after being released makes it an unlikely candidate for many projects even if it were on time.

Being on time is *everything* and the only thing that counts. Time is money, remember. Ubuntu has the same neckbreaking pace and arguably even less of a QA base, but they force it out the door on time.