just some random thoughts on our release model, etc.. I've been meaning to write up for a while but haven't had time
There has been some feedback, for example on #pandaboard, that the monthly release cycle is confusing and detrimental for folks looking for something working and stable, and not necessarily bleeding edge, the question is, "should I upgrade?", "what is fixed and what is now broken?". Linaro is doing some great upstream work, and enabling features on these boards, and it is good to showcase that, but I'm not really sure the best way to do this is rush that into the next monthly release and break things for all the new users of their shiny new xyz-board. I tend to think that part of the problem is that the cadence of monthly releases is too fast for any sort of stability. Perhaps we should think more along the lines of releases roughly every quarter (potentially with "beta"s in between). I don't think we should strictly adhere to a time based release cycle, but we should call it a final/stable release when it actually is so. There is a reason that the linux kernel uses an approx 3 month release cycle, but doesn't stick to that dogmatically when things aren't really at release quality yet. But, we do still need a place for latest-and-greatest bleeding edge for folks who want to check out what we are working on. One approach, for example for ubuntu releases, we could have a "release" and "trunk" PPA for bleeding-edge.. that way folks looking for bleeding-edge can get it, and folks looking for "it just works" are not screwed. I'm not quite sure what android equivalent would be, but I guess we could figure something out. This gives folks in board specific channels like #pandaboard who are trying to help new users something to reliably point them at without having to worry if they are giving bad advice to recommend a linaro filesystem. And updates do not have to be tied to a time-based schedule. If something is broken for feature x for board y in the release PPA, then as soon as it is fixed (and if it doesn't break board z), then push an update to the release PPA. But maybe big new features shouldn't immediately go to the release PPA without some soak time first in the trunk PPA. It is great to be enabling new features, but for someone new to the arm platform I don't want to just frustrate and scare them off. Also, I wonder if we should split #linaro, either into #linaro-devel and leave #linaro as a place that users can come to for help, or setup a separate #linaro-users? This way we aren't just dumping out new releases with nowhere for users to turn to for help.. (Well, they can always come to #linaro but I guess this would help with the signal-to-noise..) BR, -R _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
