From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id BA68CCA8 for ; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 21:49:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-pl1-f170.google.com (mail-pl1-f170.google.com [209.85.214.170]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C86067D5 for ; Tue, 4 Sep 2018 21:49:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-pl1-f170.google.com with SMTP id f1-v6so2247504plt.4 for ; Tue, 04 Sep 2018 14:49:36 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Guenter Roeck To: Laura Abbott , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org References: <5c9c41b2-14f9-41cc-ae85-be9721f37c86@redhat.com> From: Guenter Roeck Message-ID: <2c3b5669-bf03-326e-e61a-73100c141857@roeck-us.net> Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2018 14:49:33 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <5c9c41b2-14f9-41cc-ae85-be9721f37c86@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Greg KH Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] Stable trees and release time List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On 09/04/2018 01:58 PM, 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. > For my part, a longer -rc interval would not help or improve the situation. Given the large number of security fixes, it would actually make the situation worse: In many cases I could no longer wait for a fix to be available in a release. Instead, I would have to pick and pre-apply individual patches from a pending release. I like the idea of having (no more than) one release per week with the exception of security fixes, but longer -rc intervals would be problematic. Guenter