[arch-general] On rolling release system and its benefits.

[Ali H. Caliskan]

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 :)

/ali

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 5:28 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis <grbzks at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 12:19 AM, Ali H. Caliskan
> > <ali.h.caliskan at gmail.com> 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.
>