fedora-devel vs fedora-FC2-alpha? (was: Re: fedora-devel not up-to-date with fedora-yarrow-updates? (please fix)

[Mark Mielke]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 12:41:11PM -0500, Nalin Dahyabhai wrote:
> If they're broken, or some other problem crops up with those versions,
> absolutely, but in this instance, we're talking about testing updates
> for the most part.  If it's not a testing update, it's a question of
> when the package maintainer rebuilds it for the FC2 development tree
> (which generally needs to be done for reasons outlined earlier in this
> thread, but I think we both agree on that).

I think maybe our disagreement comes with our understanding of what
fedora-devel means. You (and other) people have spoken about fedora-devel
as a potential snapshot for FC2. The idea seems to be that when the release
dates begins to approach, fedora-devel will get locked down.

Other people have suggested that fedora-devel is an experimental area where
security fixes and reliability may not be found.

These two opinions seem to both be correct under the current process, as
contradictory as they may be (especially as the release date approaches).

Perhaps fedora-devel should *not* be understood as a potential snapshot for
FC2, but rather, only as an experimental staging area. Then, FC2-alpha
could be staged in a different location. This would allow fedora-devel
testers to experiment with packages that might not be officially released
until FC3, even when FC2 is being locked down... (to some degree, this fits
in with the Fedora "Extras" process, except that fedora-devel would have a
different scope)

Up until now, this has likely not been done due to resource constraints. It
seems to me that as the submission process is opened to the the open source
community, the issue of resources should become less important.

People looking for FC2-alpha, and people who want FCX-devel are looking for
different things.

Thoughts?
mark

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