On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:19 AM, Ali H. Caliskan wrote:

...

Hi,

I've been using Arch since few months and I enjoy using it everyday that goes by. However, during that time, while helping Arch users on the forum, I've encountered some issues concerning upgrades and broken packages. I personally think Arch is stable and well maintained compared to other big distros, but that's a rolling release stability, that lasts only few days or weeks. What I would like Arch developers is to extend the rolling release into a snapshot release of an entire list of officially maintained packages, comprising both core and extra branches. At least it would be a great way of using Arch for 5 to 6 moths and then upgrade to a next snapshot release. I'm not talking about stable releases, just a snapshot of a rolling state. Snapshot releases does also benefit the natural need of closing bugs. Not to mention, it does make it easy to maintain orphaned packages as well.

Regards,

Ali

Hi, it has been discussed many times in the past. Bottom line is, if you want to do that go ahead, the developers wont help you. Meaning this will not be an official project. See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_Stable for info about the last time this was attempted. & good luck

Man, every few months this used to come up... it's been a while for this one. Won't happen. Nope. Nada. Go ahead and try, there's lots of ideas. Hell, it's real easy, you don't even have to build packages. Just mirror the Arch repos, figure out some metrics defining what is "stable", and then snapshot those packages. Continue mirroring until you find another point in time that is "stable" and snapshot again. Seems easy to me. The fact is, no one really cares. Yes, software will break. Software is complicated. Something will always go wrong. The people who get so out of shape about some apps being broken (what is it this time? Xorg doesn't work with my keyboard! rollback! rollback!) are the same people not willing to help themselves. If someone spent 10 minutes trying to resolve their problems, they'd actually resolve them. The same people wanting to do snapshot/stable/whatever releases are the same people who usually don't spend a small amount of time fixing their own issues... where do you think they'll find the time to maintain a whole distro? So, there you go. Official position: Not gonna happen. Wiki link to existing ideas: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_Stable Implementation examples: See my first large paragraph Go ahead. It's all there for ya. I, for one, would love to see someone do this.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 5:51 PM, Ali H. Caliskan wrote:

Well, I didn't intend to upset you guys :) But such is history, it appears to have happened bofore and it certainly will happen again. I'm not saying that I need this, but it certainly would benefit the Arch community. I'm not a developer, so I'll have difficulties applying what you're saying though :)

No one's upset :) It's just one of those things where people like to suggest drastic things that would wildly change the distro, add to the workload, and generally make life harder for the developers without even trying it themselves. There is a reason why people say "patches welcome" when you request changes to their code - if someone cares enough, they'd do the work.

thanks for the wiki link, it's good to know that some has tried to implement the ideas, which I didn't know existed at all. On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:

...

Hi,

I've been using Arch since few months and I enjoy using it everyday that goes by. However, during that time, while helping Arch users on the forum, I've encountered some issues concerning upgrades and broken packages. I personally think Arch is stable and well maintained compared to other big distros, but that's a rolling release stability, that lasts only few days or weeks. What I would like Arch developers is to extend the rolling release into a snapshot release of an entire list of officially maintained

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:19 AM, Ali H. Caliskan wrote: packages,

...

comprising both core and extra branches. At least it would be a great way of using Arch for 5 to 6 moths and then upgrade to a next snapshot release. I'm not talking about stable releases, just a snapshot of a rolling state. Snapshot releases does also benefit the natural need of closing bugs. Not to mention, it does make it easy to maintain orphaned packages as well.

Regards,

Ali

Hi, it has been discussed many times in the past. Bottom line is, if you want to do that go ahead, the developers wont help you. Meaning this will not be an official project. See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_Stable for info about the last time this was attempted. & good luck

-- Greg

I agree with you completely. I'm not saying that Arch is unstable or stable, but rather talking about rolling release concept in snapshot release. It's good to know that there are people to seek help for this kind of project. I mean if I was a developer, I certainly would be doing stuff than writing about it. However, I'll try to assign myself that task of trying it, because of the challenge it gives you. Anyway, thank you all the developer for a great work and effort in Arch. Like I said before, it's damn pretty well maintained distro :) Kind regards, Ali On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:10 AM, Thomas Bächler wrote:

Grigorios Bouzakis schrieb:

...

Hi, it has been discussed many times in the past. Bottom line is, if you want to do that go ahead, the developers wont help you. Meaning this will not be an official project.

It's true that there won't be an official project, but it doesn't mean there won't be any help. People who know me will know that while I don't always have much time to do work, I always try to give good advice, and that is what I would also offer anyone who would start such a project. There will definitely be help and support from the dev team, but whoever decides to do this will have to do the actual work himself or herself. And believe me, creating a stable branch is lots of work - companies like Novell and rich people like Shuttleworth spend MUCH money on it!

That said, from my and many users' experience, Arch is very stable despite constantly changing. We have managed to walk the fine line between bleeding edge and stability/usability, and I think we have been doing pretty well.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 1:10 AM, Thomas Bächler wrote:

Grigorios Bouzakis schrieb:

...

Hi, it has been discussed many times in the past. Bottom line is, if you want to do that go ahead, the developers wont help you. Meaning this will not be an official project.

It's true that there won't be an official project, but it doesn't mean there won't be any help. People who know me will know that while I don't always have much time to do work, I always try to give good advice, and that is what I would also offer anyone who would start such a project. There will definitely be help and support from the dev team, but whoever decides to do this will have to do the actual work himself or herself.

Yes i know. After all if you look at the wiki link AndyRTR is listed at the people willing to help. A sidenote: The official replies eg. from phrakture, that a stable branch will not ever be part of Arch come mostly because noone has done it yet. If a group of people who are willing to do this devote time and whatever else is needed and there is adequate demand, and if such a project actually matures it *might* be part of Arch at some point. A bright example for the above is the x86_64 Archlinux branch. AndyRTR felt the need to do it. Other people helped, and got official afterwards. But it didnt start as an official project either. Thats how things work. I dont know if its mentioned in the wiki page, but its part of the Arch Way. -- Greg

I have found Arch very stable even with a rolling release system though I don't run KDE or Gnome. One cause of issues seen often in the forums is problems caused by *not* running pacman -Syu on a regular basis. I run it daily. I like Arch the way it is. It's nice to read about some issue affecting users of release based systems only to find it has already been fixed in Arch's repos. :) If I wanted more stability I would use Debian. Mike