I do not know if it is possible, but I think that the way the Eclipse
foundation is running the Eclipse project is worth mentioning:
- they have milestone target every 6 weeks, aimed at power users (stable
enough to run on their own, but might break compatibility with existing
plugins).
For a linux distribution, it would mean main elements ok, for contrib
packages dependencies might be broken.
- then they have a RC cycle in the last two months to produce the final
release. Only major problems are fixed there, no new features.
- Service releases are produced 3 months and 8 months after release, to
integrate major bug fixes => this could be some xxxx.1 and xxxx.2
releases after the main xxxx release.
The main reason of the milestone is that Eclipse committers are more or
less supposed to run the latest millestone: have your cake and eat it
too. Any problem in the milestone should that way be met by those
developers and quickly reported for a fix in the next milestone.
Here the idea is that Mageia supporters willing to help making it better
should be able to run the latest milestone without must risks
(basic functionality working).
All the details about Eclipse release process is available on:
http://www.eclipse.org/projects/dev_process/development_process_2010.php
Daniel
I find this method interesting as the risk of breaking your system is
minimized and you could conceivably re-install any broken/offending
software. I think if Mageia adopted such a method it could attract more
users who are interesting in helping in "bug finding". More bug finding
-> more of a rock solid distro. We could then have a larger pool of testers.
Marc
