[Fedora-ia64-list] F8 for ia64 now available

[John L. Bass]

Doug writes:
> I don't plan on rebuilding F8 iso images.  This would be better
> addressed in the rawhide tree for F9.

I personally believe this is a mistake for several reasons.

	1) The process that produced the iso's did not include a reasonable
	   first pass test cycle before they were frozen. Leaving GUI installs
	   on SR870 reference platforms broken because of a simple packaging
	   error. Volunteer help for this testing prior to ia64 F8 iso general
	   release was available.

	2) Fedora release cycle is 6 months, and given that Fedora ia64 bits
	   tend to follow general release by several weeks, it's likely that
	   potentially clean ia64 iso's are 4-5 months away.

	3) At least on SR870 reference platforms, the last three iso's are
	   broken for GUI installs.

	4) All of this reflects badly on Fedora ia64 in general.

Until such a time that Fedora adopts ia64 as a primary release, it's unlikely
there will be clean packages for everything that is in the i386 tree. The
accepted process in those trees is to only include new packages which build
on supported platforms and are stable. Otherwise the next Fedora release contains
the last stable release for that package.

Architectures which are not part of the main stream testing process should adopt
a similar policy ... release with the last known stable version of a package, to
have a complete release. Yes, this means there might be some small version skew
between a mainstream Fedora release and the packages in a Fedora ia64 release.
But the release will be complete in itself, and not crippled with omissions.

John