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

[Tim Yamin]

On Dec 10, 2007 6:49 PM, John L. Bass <jbass at dmsd.com> wrote:
> 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.

I agree. Releasing a "F8-r1" ISO would be the best way of rectifying
this and needs to be done.

> 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.

In some cases omissions are fine, especially if the packages in
question do not work properly on IA64 at all or the case of such a
package working on IA64 is close to zero (for example, drivers for
video cards that are not IA64-compatible). But at the same time,
having an older (but working) version of a package is much preferable
than having no version at all or a very broken version.

Tim