Hi, apologies for the delay in responding here.
]] Ron […] > I'd really like to keep this to just one package, for the reasons > already given (though there's surely more if anyone still needs > even more). This sounds pretty reasonable to me. > I'd really like to avoid "surprising" anyone unreasonably by pulling > the rug out from under them with no time to usefully give us their > own feedback too, and/or to contribute patches (here or upstream) to > remedy that in some suitable way. Not everyone does nothing when > that is the option they are presented with. > > I'd really like this to converge on a 'final' conclusion in a shorter > timeline than "before we really run out of toy story release names > forever". > > And I'd really like it to have a strong enough technical basis and > consensus that we can still stand by it even if there are a few > people who do cry foul from the rough - however loudly or insistently. > > Bonus points for minimising the risk of some unforeseen clusterfck > emerging that we'll only be able to (try to) fix under the stricter > freeze update rules, or that might mean we end up shipping with > nothing at all for Stretch. This all sounds reasonable to me. > Given that we're now on both the cusp of the freeze and the silly > season of the year where holidays and other rituals thin out the > attention people have for other things until the new year, and > that the smoother the freeze goes, the sooner we'll be out of it > again after February, and that given how long this has already > gone on for, that really isn't very far away ... > > What I think is looking 'best', would be to once again extend the > offer, to anyone whose joy is ruined by what we currently have, > to accept (and/or help create) reasonable patches to what we > currently have to fix that for them. If you don't drag your feet > on that, we should have plenty of time to review and upload those. Ok. > Then once the cycle begins for Stretch+1 early next year, we'll > make the move to drop htags and pull in an audited new upstream > release from whatever is current at the time. Assuming it doesn't > jump an entirely new and bigger shark in the meantime to add some > other horrible disaster that we don't yet know about. > > That means we can start telling people _now_ to expect that will > happen unless they can make a case otherwise. And that anyone > who doesn't get that memo will have a whole release cycle to > see that it's gone, and try to make their case then. Probably makes sense to add a warning anybody running htags now that «this will be dropped in the next release», then. > If nobody at all does that by the time Stretch+1 freezes, then > we can have fairly good confidence in it being a 'final' answer. > If they do, then again we actually have time to try and find a > better solution before it becomes set in stone. And we'll at > least have given them about as fair a chance, with as much > warning, as we ever reasonably can offer to do that. Yup. [...] > I'm still open to listening to other suggestions, but if we have > a sufficient consensus on this, and nothing better on the table, > then, unless I've also missed some horrible showstopper, I think > I'm willing to run with it. I think this sounds quite reasonable, all in all. It gets us a newer version (albeit not for stretch, but I see the points about changing that so close to the freeze), it gives users some warning about htags going away (and if that's a huge problem, we can adjust course as we learn more). Vincent, would this be acceptable to you? The rest of the committee: what do you think? Is this an ok way through? -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
