On Wednesday, January 09, 2013 12:02:12 PM Christophe Giboudeaux wrote:
Hi,
As decided during the last meeting, some repositories are going to be removed soon.
There are two reasons for this decision: - Saving disk space - Saving build power
Most certainly good reasons.
The following repositories will be removed in a couple days: - KDE:Release:46 - KDE:Release:47
The following flavors will be removed from the KDE:Unstable:Playground repository at the same time: - KDE_Release_47_openSUSE_12.1 - KDE_Release_48_openSUSE_12.1 - KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 - openSUSE_12.1
These changes will be applied in 7 days.
Thank you for the warning, I have a couple of questions / comments. (Guess I should participate more in the KDE team meetings) BTW, although I use some all caps phrases below, it is for emphasis, please do not assume anger or lack of appreciation of the work done by all those involved. If you want the short version, My suggestions Please do not drop /KDE:/Unstable:/Playground/KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 KDE:Release:47 (for openSUSE 12.1) Drop the other repos as planned Lengthy and persuasive arguments follow :-) It seems to me that dropping /KDE:/Unstable:/Playground/KDE_Release_49_openSUSE_12.1 and KDE:Release:47 (for openSUSE12.1) is only a tiny step from openSUSE implicitly taking a position that ONLY the current release of the distro will be supported. To quote the release notes for 12.1 "openSUSE 12.1 ships the KDE Plasma Desktop 4.7 as default workspace" I recognize that KDE4.7 is "Old" by distro standards, but to drop the recommended upgrade route for a release before it reaches EOL seems to be a bad move.
From the openSUSE Portal: "openSUSE products are backed with free software updates for 18 months after release."
Although no specific mention is made of repositories outside the core release, it seems to me that if we make upgrade recommendations such as those on the en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories page, then support for those recommendations should not be dropped until the distro reaches EOL. As for the Playground repos (my personal concern), in order to stay up to date with software such as Calligra Office and Digikam, users will be forced into a position where they MUST expect to upgrade their operating system at each release (every ~8 months). When openSUSE decided to move to an 8 month release cycle, we began to reduce long(ish) term support stating that only previous and current releases would be supported. 16 months between upgrades did not seem to be a large problem. Version 12.1 is 14 months old, 12.3 is not even released yet, so there will only be 1 fully supported release once these repos are removed. What happens if 12.3 is delayed as 12.2 was? If previous releases are going to receive such curtailed support, then perhaps it is time to once again consider rolling releases, or as an alternative, a long term support release. I do not remember why I reverted from 12.2 to 12.1, All I remember is 12.2 did not meet my needs at release, and that I had to fight with returning to my backups at the same time that I really needed a solid tested OS for work. I do not look forward to the possibility of having to face that potential every 8 months, which is the direction we are heading. Thank you everyone for the efforts you put into this distribution, I just fear that cutting support to deeply may have a negative effect on the perception of openSUSE as being an excellent choice for business and professional use. One of the places where we have traditionally been well received. One last note, If the repos are dropped as planned, then we should be sure that the information presented at http://en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories is updated as well. I really hope that this e-mail will lead to positive discussion rather than heated bickering. Thank you for reading dh -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-kde+owner@opensuse.org