[arch-releng] Dep cycles in core and 2009.01

[Gerhard Brauer]

Am Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:05:55 +0100
schrieb Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de>:

> Am Donnerstag 29 Januar 2009 20:24:28 schrieb Aaron Griffin:
> > If all goes as planned, the
> > same beta3 images will be used for release.
> 
> So, its more an RC then. :-) Maybe you could even move it straigt to
> the ftp dir with its final name and if nothing goes wrong we can just
> announce it on Monday. This way it will be already synced by the
> mirrors.

Sorry, I'm meanwhile totally against such "Counter strike" actions!

A few background infos:
First "release" should be on 24.12.2008, Aaron and myself thought: Hey,
let's modify the installer to support ext4, bring grub to work with
ext4 and build a ISO with 2.6.28. This looks first good, but than we
run in time- and communications problems during different timezones,
christmas/family, etc.

Next "release" was close for 31.12.2008, we have done a few bugfixes we
found, but the time plan was not possible cause not all needed packages
went to core (Looking from current to this past it was good that
these "time plans" could not be solved)

Then comes the showstopper with USB keyboard in initrd and the problems
with the USB images. Meanwhile all needed packages are in core, but
these problems costs us time (and lead to the private/alpha/beta ISOs).
But a "release" was very close on the first January's days, so we
anounce the "Release group", establish this ML and the bugtracker. This
step was totally OK, but we were confronted with a lot of major/minor
problems and features. This "strike" us in a situation where the releng
group was not really in the state of a working group to handle these
things in a good way.

So my opinion is:
We should stop this chaos to try releasing "tomorrow" again and again!

My plan is:
Week 6: build and test the RCs (what Aaron named beta3). Duration of RC
testing could be increased to week 7 if needed.
Definitively release date is: week 7 (or latest week 8 when we must
increase RC testing phase).

IMHO this is more realistic than our other "plans".

Gerhard