Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] Stable trees and release time

[Sasha Levin <Alexander.Levin@microsoft.com>]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2018 at 01:58:42PM -0700, Laura Abbott wrote:
>I'd like to start a discussion about the stable release cycle.
>
>Fedora is a heavy user of the most recent stable trees and we
>generally do a pretty good job of keeping up to date. As we
>try and increase testing though, the stable release process
>gets to be a bit difficult. We often run into the problem where
>release .Z is officially released and then .Z+1 comes
>out as an -rc immediately after. Given Fedora release processes,
>we haven't always finished testing .Z by the time .Z+1 comes
>out. What to do in this situation really depends on what's in
>.Z and .Z+1 and how stable we think things are. This usually
>works out fine but a) sometimes we guess wrong and should have
>tested .Z more b) we're only looking to increase testing.
>
>What I'd like to see is stable updates that come on a regular
>schedule with a longer -rc interval, say Sunday with
>a one week -rc period. I understand that much of the current
>stable schedule is based on Greg's schedule. As a distro
>maintainer though, a regular release schedule with a longer
>testing window makes it much easier to plan and deliver something
>useful to our users. It's also a much easier sell for encouraging
>everyone to pick up every stable update if there's a known
>schedule. I also realize Greg is probably reading this with a very
>skeptical look on his face so I'd be interested to hear from
>other distro maintainers as well.

OTOH, what I like with the current process is that I don't have to align
any of the various (internal) release schedules we have with some
standard stable kernel release schedule. I just pick the latest stable
kernel (.Z) and we go through our build/testing pipeline on it. If
another stable kernel (.Z+1) is released a day later it will just wait
until the next release based on our schedule.

Why not set your own release schedule and just take the latest stable
kernel at that point? So what if the .Z+1 kernel is out a day later? You
could just queue it up for your next release.

This is exactly what would happen if you ask Greg to go on some sort of
a schedule - he'll just defer the .Z+1 commits to what would have been
the .Z+2 release, so you don't really win anything by moving to a
stricter schedule.

--
Thanks,
Sasha