[PHILOSOPHY] Stability and Release Schedules

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Fri Apr 28 04:13:02 UTC 2006


On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 22:52, Mike McCarty wrote:

> >>
> >>Here's one which may make more headway for understanding. There is
> >>in any piece of software's life a thing called "integration test"
> >>where it is tested with other pieces it must coexist with. Until
> >>any given piece has been tested with other pieces, it may work
> >>fine, or it may not, but we don't know.
> > 
> > 
> > That would imply that you shouldn't expect software to work
> > unless it all comes from a single vendor, which should
> > not be the case at all - and if it is, you probably
> > shouldn't use any of it.  Your interfaces either do
> > what they are documented to do or not, and no amount
> > of changes to other parts should change that.
> 
> I guarantee you, with anything as complex as an entire
> OS distribution, the interfaces do not all do exactly
> what they are documented to do. Anyone believing otherwise
> lives in a fantasy land.

Oh, I believe a lot of things are broken.  I'm just not
sure I agree that replacing everything at once with
a new set that passed a couple of tests together is
the right way to deal with it.  In particular it doesn't
make any sense to me to have to replace a kernel and
device drivers that have worked flawlessly on my hardware
for the last year or more with some wildly different
version just to get a new version of evolution and
some other desktop apps.	

> It is true that not all software would benefit as much
> from integration test as others. OTOH, things like the
> compilers, linkage editors, link libraries, kernel,
> server programs, device drivers, installers, disc editors
> and partition managers, and boot loaders all need some
> integration test.

You seem to be forgetting that with fedora, the users
*are* the integration test.  And for people who have their
own apps, the OS distribution is just supposed to supply
working unix-like interfaces.

> And not with just software, either. Many BIOS are known
> to be broken. And then there are different hardware for
> test. Trying to test all combinations just takes too much
> time.
> 
> Look at all the stuff SELinux broke.

Well, yes - the unix-like interface was pretty well
designed by about sysvr4 when linux started the attempt
to emulate it. 

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com





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