FC4-test1 - Most we upgrade to rawhide or not?

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 15:15:21 UTC 2005


On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:40:02 +0100, Gabriel Labelle
<glabelle at optimized.org> wrote:
> I would simply like to know if the Rawhide PPC packages were the "updates" > to FC4-test1 or if FC4-test1 must remain static (as it is) in order to get better
> testing?

in general... for fedora core test releases... rawhide is the source
for updates.
The test releases are simply snapshots from th rawhide tree at certain
points in time.

Whether or not you choose to remain static or not is up to you as a tester.
Clearly if you find a specific bug, there is value in updating to a
rawhide package that claims to fix the problem so that you can confirm
the fix... or if its a critical fix that you need to get access to
more of the system functionality.  As a tester, I think this is the
basic responsibility you implicitly agree to. If you file a bug for
the test release, you need to try to confirm the fix at some point.

How much rawhide you should consume is probably more related to your
comfort and experience level with troubleshooting and system repair.
Eating all possible rawhide updates every day will of course have
value in making sure as packages come out they don't have serious
regressions.. but doing this also comes with extra risks if there are
regressions or new packaging problems associated with packages that
you don't have a good feel for.  Some testers can eat rawhide every
day and are both emotional and mentally prepared for the potential
breakage... some testers aren't so prepared and as a result the full
rawhide updates can be a very frustrating experience.

The key to using rawhide... even if you are doing full updates every
day... is being aware of exactly what packages you are pulling so if
there is a problem you can start trying to narrow it down. I would
strongly suggest avoiding doing full rawhide updates in one pass as
much as possible. Its much easier to narrow down problems if you do
rawhide updates in small groups of packages. If something goes south
you don't have a whole forest of packages to review as you try to
narrow down whatever problem you end up seeing.

There is a daily rawhide buildreport to the fedora-devel-list
mailinglist which you should be at least skimming over.
http://fedoraproject.org/infofeed/inputs/rawhide.xml
is the rss feed for the rawhide reports i think.
and http://fedoraproject.org/infofeed/  incorporates this feed.

You will see problems with rawhide updates at some point... its pretty
much a garuntee. Just make sure you are prepared.

-jef




More information about the fedora-test-list mailing list