State of 7.2/8.0 in Fedora Legacy

[Kelson Vibber]

At 09:33 AM 5/20/2004, Eric Rostetter wrote:
>Of course I don't want to see it dropped.  But that doesn't mean it shouldn't
>be dropped.  Just because it is useful to 10% of the community doesn't mean
>it should hold up the other 90% of the community.  But as part of the 10%
>of course I don't want to see it dropped.  That doesn't mean I would fight
>to stop it, as I can see the reality of the situation.

If the choice is between a poor release schedule for all four RHL versions, 
or a good release schedule for 7.3 and 9, I'd pick the good release 
schedule.  As has been mentioned before, upgrading from 7.2 to 7.3 or from 
8.0 to 9 is generally simple, the only real pain for most people being that 
of taking the system offline to upgrade.  (Disclaimer: all our RHL systems 
are running 7.3 and 9, so the decision doesn't affect us either way.)

I don't know what the success rate is for upgrading 7.2->7.3 or 8.0->9 
using yum or apt-get dist-upgrade, but if it's high enough, perhaps posting 
directions on doing so would be valuable.  That would eliminate most of the 
downtime (since it could be done on a live system and require only a reboot).

Others have suggested an "unsupported" tree for 7.2 and 8.0 - basically 
dispensing with the QA.  How about a two-tiered QA?  Set up a plan so that 
if packages for the first-tier releases are done, but packages for 
second-tier releases aren't after X days, release all the ones that *are* 
finished with a note that "RHL 8.0 is also vulnerable, but updates are 
still being tested."  Then once the remaining packages *are* done, release 
the new package and re-release the advisory.  On the other hand, this idea 
may turn out to be more work than doing the QA in the first place.


Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>