| Sven Mueller 2004-10-10, 5:54 pm |
| Thomas Bushnell BSG [u] wrote on 09/10/2004 19:12:
> Sven Mueller <sm@leogic.com> writes:
>
>
> It's in fact so difficult, that this is exactly why we don't just
> allow arbitrary changes to stable things, and relabeling them
> "volatile" and "optional" doesn't actually change the matter.
Right. We don't want arbitrary changes - as you call it - allowed into
the main stable release. What is proposed here however is a way to allow
users to opt-in on changes like that.
> We might need a method for allowing really important upgrades in to
> stable, which preserve stability, and we have that now for regular
> stable proposed updates, for security, and we could add it for virus
> scanners and the like. But in all those cases, we need the same
> concern for stability.
Well, that would be nice to have. However, these updates would most
likely still be far too infrequent. And there are quite a few people
around, which are ready to accept a (very) low possibility of added
instability for having optimal performance with this kind of software.
What most people in this thread seem to see in volatile.d.o is an opt-in
to get certain packages ported to stable in a cutting-edge like fashion.
Not really bleeding-edge, but newest upstream release which is stable
enough for production.
I certainly wouldn't like to see - say - SpamAssassin 4.0 in volatile on
the very same day it was released upstream. But I would like to see it
in there as soon as it has proven to be stable enough for püroduction
and it has also proven to not interfere with the stability of the rest
of the system.
> Saying "it's really hard" is not a good excuse! People are doing it
> for those other packages all the time.
You are comparing apples and oranges here. Backporting a security fix
for some software usually only affects a few lines of code. Backporting
an updated scanning engine for a virus/spam/network scanner is something
completely different. We might want to set some sort of limit as to
which kind/size of change has to be backported and which kind/size of
change can warrant an update to the current stable upstream release.
>
> Right, and I'm happy to see that done, provided that only the new
> features are allowed which actually keep the particular utility in
> place.
I'm sorry, but for the idea of volatile.d.o most people in this thread
expressed (i.e. IIRC only you seem to object to that idea), this
limitation is not intended.
However, I see the value of that kind of limitation, but I would like to
see the kind of policy you seem to have in mind to be used for updates
to the regular stable release.
>
> Heh, but compromise is always possible, and I'm interested in hearing
> what other people say about this proposed policy before I comment
> further on its details.
You're welcome.
cu,
sven
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