Proposal for the coming versions

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Mon Mar 13 18:13:38 UTC 2006


Cees de Groot wrote:
> The conclusion from 3.9 development so far seems to be that combining
> MC's model with the model of the update stream is painful. Because the
> "upstream" code is managed and therefore normally delivered to the
> release team by means of MC, removing MC from the picture is
> difficult. Which means that the update stream must be removed. 

Interesting. I'm not sure I buy that conclusion. Because, while I agree 
that using MC with the update stream model is painful, it seems that the 
cause of that pain is purely and unequivocally Monticello itself. The 
update stream is already used as a last-resort kind of thing but 
unfortunately (as discussed in previous messages) Monticello is unable 
to deal with a multitude of issues that arise in system evolution. So 
I'm really curious as to how you think removal of the update stream 
would reduce the pain all by itself.

> My proposal is to not work with an update stream during "fast
> development" - that is certainly up to and including the alpha stage,
> but probably also up to and including the beta stage. After that, the
> version is frozen (more so than until now - 3.8 saw entirely new
> features rather than just bugfixes during its lifetime), and the
> patches that need to be applied can be fed through the update stream
> mechanism again.

If we apply this logic to 3.9 (just to understand the model you're 
proposing) would this mean we'd still be in a situation where a user 
who'd want to have a look at the latest alpha would effectively go 
through a process by which she downloads a 3.8 image, figures out in 
which order to load the latest (or new/removed) packages and does that 
all by herself? Have you tried that lately? ;-)

[BTW, don't get me wrong here, I'd really *love* to see a model that 
says "get 3.8 load some packages, have 3.9" work; this isn't a critique 
of the idea just a little reality check since I've tried to work in such 
a way for quite some time now and it's painfully obvious how much MC 
lacks in this regard].

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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