An intermediate release to `bo' and `hamm' (Re: No Debian updates?)
Jim Pick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Still, I imagine a debian release between stable and unstable. Stable is > > nice for the space shuttle or other critical purposes. But, let's say, the > > netscape installer package: There's no bug in the old version. But I think > > there should be a place outside the developers' corner for the new one ... > > Somewhere, where dselect can be used. ? > > I've thought about this myself too. > > What would be nice is a "cutting edge, but reliable" distribution that > was separate from the standard stable release. This could possibly be > done by a different project than Debian (or even a company). It would > be based on the standard stable major releases, and would be supplemented > by more up-to-date packages from unstable. It would be fully tested, > and released on a monthly basis. [snip] > It's difficult, if not impossible, for us (the Debian developers) to > do well-tested and thought out releases on a tighter timetable than > what we are doing for the major releases (3-6 months). This is due > to the distributed, volunteer nature of the organization. > > But the packaging system itself can support a much tighter release > schedule than what we are capable of. dpkg's system of dependencies > and conflicts means that it is possible to support building releases > and upgrading in a very piecemeal manner. A separate organization > dedicated to building a "cutting edge, but reliable" distribution > from the raw output from the Debian project could be very successful. Even if not for this reason, I think an intermediate release would be quite useful. I'm thinking of a hamm-friendly bo (hbo? :-) -- which basically has all the `libc5' libraries from hamm. People using `bo' would upgrade to `hbo', which basically moves all the libc5 libraries from /usr/lib to /usr/lib/libc5-compat, and all devel tools into /usr/i486-linuxlibc1; leaving thing in a state most amenable to upgrading to `hamm'. This could be a mini-distribution, which just has the libraries, and maybe the `altdev's, and some packages that are closely dependent on the exact version of the shared libs (`bash' would be one, I guess). Such a distribution would help greatly in the Libc5 to Libc6 migration. - Hari -- Raja R Harinath -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] "When all else fails, read the instructions." -- Cahn's Axiom "Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing." -- Roy L Ash -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
> Hi, > > I think the company/ group of people who are supposed to > create this distribution are called the quality control/testing > group. This is theoretically composed of people who are not > necessarily maintainers, so they do not have to worry about new > software. > > Maybe this should be taken up with the people in charge of the > testing/ quality assurance groups? Are the groups still active? Am I > mis remembering things? I think the job of maintaining and updating a separate parallel distribution (integrating stuff from unstable into stable and making approximately monthly releases) is a much bigger undertaking than what the debian-qa group (as it currently exists) can pull off. The debian-qa group currently seems to focus on fixing orphaned packages and doing installation tests of "frozen" for major releases. I think that is what it should be doing. I think that a separate distribution based on stable would be best handled as a separate project (perhaps a sub-project of Debian). This would be the sort of thing that could work very well if it was organized as a consortium of companies that wish to market an up-to-date version of Debian to compete with Red Hat. It would involve a lot of time consuming grunt work, which is best done by paid employees, so it would fit well with Bruce's concept of using Debian as a base for commercial distributions. As far as the current set of volunteer maintainers go -- I'll repeat, I don't think any of us have enough time to do a really, really good job of maintaining a separate set of stable releases. That's were commercial distributions such as Red Hat are going to kick our butt. We'll leap ahead every six months or so when we do a major release based on the stuff in unstable. But then our user base will be sort of left behind for 6 months until the next major release. It's no surprise many users will choose a distribution such as Red Hat which has enough (paid) resources to put together up-to-date releases and updates on a tighter schedule. Where we excel is in development - because we have so many maintainers. Doing development is inherently parallellizable. Unfortunately, final release testing and integration testing isn't -- that's best done by a small close-knit teams. We don't really have any small close-knit teams. That's a key reason we have so many debacles around the time we come out with a major release. It's only the flexibility of our packaging system that enables us to save our butts come release time. I think it's time to 'fess up to the fact that we aren't really all that good at building polished, refined, fully tested 'releases' that cut it as 'product'. (no flames please) But the raw output of what we do is awesome. If somebody wanted to invest in doing the final polishing, testing, bug fixing, and releasing -- they would be rewarded with a highly marketable product. Cheers, - Jim pgpsKhG5gd5Uj.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: No Debian updates?
Hi, I think the company/ group of people who are supposed to create this distribution are called the quality control/testing group. This is theoretically composed of people who are not necessarily maintainers, so they do not have to worry about new software. Maybe this should be taken up with the people in charge of the testing/ quality assurance groups? Are the groups still active? Am I mis remembering things? manoj -- Remember thee Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there. Hamlet, I : v : 95 William Shakespeare Manoj Srivastava mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mobile, Alabama USAhttp://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/> -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
> Still, I imagine a debian release between stable and unstable. Stable is > nice for the space shuttle or other critical purposes. But, let's say, the > netscape installer package: There's no bug in the old version. But I think > there should be a place outside the developers' corner for the new one ... > Somewhere, where dselect can be used. ? I've thought about this myself too. What would be nice is a "cutting edge, but reliable" distribution that was separate from the standard stable release. This could possibly be done by a different project than Debian (or even a company). It would be based on the standard stable major releases, and would be supplemented by more up-to-date packages from unstable. It would be fully tested, and released on a monthly basis. The Debian project doesn't really have what it takes to maintain two different streams of releases. All the developers run unstable, so very few of them have the environment (or the time) to make releases for both an unstable and a stable release. The people (or company) running this separate project would not have to concentrate on developing new software - but just integrate the cutting edge stuff into the stable release, testing it, and releasing it. They would probably have to make changes to many packages (ie. recompile for libc5, fix dependencies) in order for everything to work properly. This project could operate a separate bug system which would allow them to "intercept" bugs that are their own doing, and forward real bugs to the Debian maintainers. A project such as this would also be very beneficial to the regular Debian project and maintainers, since we could then concentrate on preparing a single "stable" release every 3-6 months. An additional bonus would be no more flamewars about stable release maintenance. It's difficult, if not impossible, for us (the Debian developers) to do well-tested and thought out releases on a tighter timetable than what we are doing for the major releases (3-6 months). This is due to the distributed, volunteer nature of the organization. But the packaging system itself can support a much tighter release schedule than what we are capable of. dpkg's system of dependencies and conflicts means that it is possible to support building releases and upgrading in a very piecemeal manner. A separate organization dedicated to building a "cutting edge, but reliable" distribution from the raw output from the Debian project could be very successful. Cheers, - Jim pgpVLfBuS61zk.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: No Debian updates?
On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, joost witteveen wrote: > > On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, lukas eppler wrote: > > Do people who don't want to fiddle around with libc6-stuff wait half a > > year for an upgrade? > > ... > The excuse we have this time is the libc6 change. This means _every_ > package has to be rebuild, and possible modified somewhat, and this takes > time. > > I'd say things are going well, though. Thank you for your kind reply, I lost my temper a bit, sorry. I may have underestimated the effort it takes to build up everything on libc6. Still, I imagine a debian release between stable and unstable. Stable is nice for the space shuttle or other critical purposes. But, let's say, the netscape installer package: There's no bug in the old version. But I think there should be a place outside the developers' corner for the new one ... Somewhere, where dselect can be used. ? Thanks, -- Lukas Eppler (godot) http://www.fear.ch telnet://soil.fear.ch: talk:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, joost witteveen wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Im using Debian Linux for about a year now. Is it true that there were > > no updates in the stable non-free contrib files for 3 (in words: three) > > months now? (I am using ftp.debian.org as ftp-server). > > Well, stable is called stable for one reason! > > But I think there have been updates, only as little as possible. > We don't go about adding packages/updates to stable just becase > a new version was released, we only do it to fix serious bugs. > > (Recently the samba bug for example, so the new samba package apparently > already is in updates (or whatever the direectory is called)). Yes, samba appeared Sep 28 on my mirror. But there are quite old things in bo-updates, too. Are these going to be finally included in bo? While they are only in bo-updates, they are inaccessible to dselect users. "The directory ../bo-updates contains potential fixes to 1.3, files that may become part of the next version of 1.3. They are placed there so that they may be well tested before final inclusion." (from the READMEs in bo/bo-updates.) > > dselect does not find any new file for Debian 1.3 Or is there > > something wrong with my linux... > > Maybe you didn't have any of packages installed that were > updated (look at the changelog to see what changed). Or, more likely, it's because all that's happened in the last three months is new boot disks and the removal of five packages. > If you want new packages, go to "unstable" (and check out the libc6 > update FAQ frequently posted to debian-user). Note that problems > with "unstable" should ideally be posted to debian-devel (an open list). That's not really an option for those of us running production systems. (But I do take on board that the developers are busy with libc6.) -- David Wright, Open University, Earth Science Department, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA U.K. email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] tel: +44 1908 653 739 fax: +44 1908 655 151 -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
No flame intended gents. I use Debian for work and school, not a playground. I want to be able to use it without screwing around with updates/bugfixes/jadajada. Every four or five months is fine for an update unless critical. I think many others feel the same way. You can always get the actual source for the app and compile it yourself and put it in /usr/local if you have to upgrade (/usr/local is my play field). Or you could work with the package maintainer to speed up releases. Remember this is all volunteer effort. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
> On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, joost witteveen wrote: > > > > Im using Debian Linux for about a year now. Is it true that there were > > > no updates in the stable non-free contrib files for 3 (in words: three) > > > months now? (I am using ftp.debian.org as ftp-server). > > > > Well, stable is called stable for one reason! > > > > But I think there have been updates, only as little as possible. > > We don't go about adding packages/updates to stable just becase > > a new version was released, we only do it to fix serious bugs. > > Who says that? "Debian". > Do people who don't want to fiddle around with libc6-stuff wait half a > year for an upgrade? They have to wait indefinately, as hamm is going to be libc6. So they will have to install libc6 anyway. > The ftp/dselect method was, why I changed to debian. Why don't you try to > have something stable and actual? We do:). We actually planned/hoped to make a "stable" release of debian every three months. (Long time ago, that was before we released "bo", that also was some time late). And I don't think I'll be able to convince you we are still on skedule with hamm eighter (more than 3 months have already passed since bo's release, I think). The excuse we have this time is the libc6 change. This means _every_ package has to be rebuild, and possible modified somewhat, and this takes time. I'd say things are going well, though. Notice, BTW, that, although Linux has been going though several libc soname changes (the a.out libc4 only 1.5/2 year ago, then libc5, and now libc6), there are people in-the-know (upstream maintainer of glibc for example) that believe there will not be any libc soname changes in the forseeable future. So, that may mean our next "stable" releases are more timely. (Or, more likely, that we will think of some other excuse). -- joost witteveen, [EMAIL PROTECTED] #!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777ihttp://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, joost witteveen wrote: > > Im using Debian Linux for about a year now. Is it true that there were > > no updates in the stable non-free contrib files for 3 (in words: three) > > months now? (I am using ftp.debian.org as ftp-server). > > Well, stable is called stable for one reason! > > But I think there have been updates, only as little as possible. > We don't go about adding packages/updates to stable just becase > a new version was released, we only do it to fix serious bugs. Who says that? Do people who don't want to fiddle around with libc6-stuff wait half a year for an upgrade? I am afraid of installing unstable, I don't want to spend too much time to find bugs. But If I have to wait until Debian 2.0 is released I don't see the point in these quick and beautiful ftp upgrades. If I always have to use software which is four months behind, I can buy a cd, that's faster. The ftp/dselect method was, why I changed to debian. Why don't you try to have something stable and actual? Gruss -- Lukas Eppler (godot) http://www.fear.ch telnet://soil.fear.ch: talk:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: No Debian updates?
> Hi, > > Im using Debian Linux for about a year now. Is it true that there were > no updates in the stable non-free contrib files for 3 (in words: three) > months now? (I am using ftp.debian.org as ftp-server). Well, stable is called stable for one reason! But I think there have been updates, only as little as possible. We don't go about adding packages/updates to stable just becase a new version was released, we only do it to fix serious bugs. (Recently the samba bug for example, so the new samba package apparently already is in updates (or whatever the direectory is called)). > dselect does not find any new file for Debian 1.3 Or is there > something wrong with my linux... Maybe you didn't have any of packages installed that were updated (look at the changelog to see what changed). If you want new packages, go to "unstable" (and check out the libc6 update FAQ frequently posted to debian-user). Note that problems with "unstable" should ideally be posted to debian-devel (an open list). -- joost witteveen, [EMAIL PROTECTED] #!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777ihttp://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
No Debian updates?
Hi, Im using Debian Linux for about a year now. Is it true that there were no updates in the stable non-free contrib files for 3 (in words: three) months now? (I am using ftp.debian.org as ftp-server). dselect does not find any new file for Debian 1.3 Or is there something wrong with my linux... Thanx, Gernot -- -- Gernot Bauer University of Linz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
