development cycle (Was: Re: What's New in Fedora Core 5 Test2 (LWN): Some comments)

[Rahul Sundaram]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

>Am Montag, den 30.01.2006, 10:14 -0800 schrieb Jesse Keating:
>  
>
>>On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 10:25 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>While we are at the topic already: This fact was badly communicated.
>>>There seems to be a whole lot of confusion about the current Fedora
>>>release cycle in the community -- for example the german
>>>wikipedia-writers have a long discussion about it and nowhere can find a
>>>*official* statement [*1] that the nine month cycle for FC5 was only a
>>>exception:
>>>http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diskussion:Fedora_Core#6_Monate
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm confused.  Wasn't our original and still official release schedule
>>every 6-9 months? 
>>    
>>
>
>Now I'm confused. Wasn't the original and still official release
>schedule "Fedora Core is released two or tree times a year"? (that would
>be 4-6 months)
>
>  
>
This guideline still is true.

>Seems it still is:
>http://fedora.redhat.com/about/rhel.html
>Release Interval Fedora: 4-6 months
>  
>
That page is outdated and is not linked from the current website 
http://fedora.redhat.com. The entire website is scheduled for a 
transition in http://fedoraproject.org.

>http://fedora.redhat.com/about/objectives.html
>10. Produce robust releases approximately 2-3 times per year [...]
>  
>
See above.

>>Where is the confusion coming from?
>>    
>>
>
>Because nobody ever officially wrote down that the nine months time
>frame of FC5 was a exception.
>
The development plans were discussed in fedora-devel list at the start 
of the release. Developers involved did state that it was the release 
cycle change was intended only for FC5. Thats as official as it gets.


> And because we have no long term plan for
>FC6 and FC7. 
>
We decide it when the development work starts. This is how releases are 
planned for almost every software out there.

>I know that Suse and Ubuntu always release around March
>(+/-1 some weeks) and September (+/- some weeks). Fedora is
>unpredictable.
>  
>
Two to three releases as a rough guideline pretty much stands still with 
Fedora Core 5 being an exception.

"BTW, I know some people that switched to Ubuntu or openSuse because they

had Gnome 2.12 (FC4 has 2.10). Ridiculous IMHO, but some people are like
this.  ;-)  "

There were various third party repositories providing GNOME 2.12 packages in FC4. People interested can always work on a backports repository for Fedora. Trying to providing all the latest packages all the time is a job for the development release and not the GA release in my opinion. Fedora development plans should be decided on the basis of the project goals and the developers involved and not to try and win who is the first race. 




>BTW, I have no problem when a release slips 2 or 4 weeks due to some
>issues. But later releases shouldn't be effected due to this. So a
>"Fedora releases normally at the end of March and End of September"
>would be a really good idea IMHO.
>  
>
If you want to discuss how to do all the changes we did within Fedora 
Core 5 development especially the major infrastructure changes such as 
Anaconda, modular Xorg and new GCC as system compiler within the same 
release schedule as the previous releases feel free to start a 
discussion in the fedora-devel list. Considering the major work 
involved, I dont see a way it could have been crammed into a 6 month 
release cycle. What is the problem with the current release model of 
doing a public non-rigid time based releases?

-- 
Rahul 

Fedora Bug Triaging - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers