alpha/beta software in Fedora 8?

Rex Dieter rdieter at math.unl.edu
Mon Dec 10 15:48:23 UTC 2007


Steve Grubb wrote:

> OK, here is what upstream said:

Thanks for the persistence and followup. :)

>>> 1) Is this (kdepim-enterprise-svn20070926.tar.bz2) an officially
>>> supported release?
>>
>>No, it says "svn" which means it was a development snapshot.
>>We do have some snapshots which we consider good for testing
>>which which some people use in production (as testing) and packagers
>>might want to pick up for the "test" builds, check
>>http://apt.intevation.de/dists/etch/unstable/source/

That's news to me.  When I asked, I was told there was no "release" and to
pull from subversion.  Glad to hear otherwise.
 
> Question: are we using this as our source? Should we sync up with their
> recommendations?

Makes sense.

>>> 2) How much testing goes into a tarball like this before a release?
>>
>>We did not release this tarball, it seems to have been a snapshot
>>quality control depends on the one who created it.
>>
>>The ones that you can find in the mentioned "unstable" apt directory above
>>have seen internal testing. This consists of testing towards the new
>>feature and a basic test that covers some core functionality.

Make sense +2.  I'm curious exactly "internal testing" exactly means, but
either way, it's better than a random snapshot with no "internal testing".

>>> 3) Did you make any kind of announcement that this was ready to be used
>>> by end users?
>>
>>No.

Sorry if you've already heard this before, but it's worth repeating: I was
told at akademy of kdepim-enterprise's existence, by several of it's
developers, and urged to strongly consider using this (in fedora).

> Observation: Since they are not announcing anything about a feature being
> complete, a snapshot on a random day could catch something half patched.

fwiw, I watch the commits, make an effort to get "good" snapshots, but point
taken.

>>> 4) Is this release stable enough for a business to run on?
>>
>>I cannot say, it depends who created the snapshot
>>and what promisses were made for it. Probably not.
> 
> So, if you use Fedora's kmail, the upstream *developers* say it not stable
> enough to use for production. By taking snaps on random days, we are on
> our own. I rest my case....

I think we can all agree that random snapshots are bad, and it's nice to be
made aware of uptream's semi-official, internally tested, tarball
snapshots.

Would switching to their snapshots instead of our own random ones, satisfy
most/all of your concerns?

-- Rex




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