On Tuesday 25 September 2012 12:11:51 Togan Muftuoglu wrote:
On 09/25/2012 11:49 AM, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
On Monday, September 24, 2012 20:41:54 Jos Poortvliet wrote:
In any case. Point still stands: many users would appreciate a slower
release cycle, for various reasons. It would also probably help
release management as we could introduce longer freeze periods. It
might make development more boring and will result in a more outdated
openSUSE - but we can counter that probably with OBS fu.
We have already very long freeze periods and always increased them. This
cannot be our answer each and every time - we need find to ways better
so
that we can freeze less. And this is the whole discussion about: How to
improve our processes so that we have a better factory and release all
the time?
What use scenarios do you have in mind for openSUSE, I wonder? Let me lay
out a few here for you.
* Ad Min knows what he's doing. He's an experienced sysadmin and does some
testing of openSUSE milestones when he has spare time.
* Grand Ma knows not know much of computers but as long as she can print
pictures from her grand children she's quite happy.
* Yo Ung is new to the world of computing but she wants to learn to program.
* Dev Elop has been developing software for a few years and has recently
starting to package.
Usage:
* Ad Min has openSUSE on a few servers, his laptop and his desktop.
* Yo Ung has picked up a openSUSE DVD at a conference as she heard about
cool projects like OBS and tumbleweed and is going to play with it.
* Grand Ma just has her one computer. Ad takes care of it, however!
* Dev Elop has a computer for work and one for packaging.
What do they run?
Ad runs openSUSE Stable on the servers and on his laptop. On the laptop he
has a bunch of OBS repo's to have the latest tools, but as he takes the
laptop to customers, Factory or even Tumbleweed are no option. The desktop
can be more up-to-date but is also for work so Factory gets installed in a
VM while the system runs Tumbleweed or stable.
Dev would run Factory on one computer but the other one is for work -
Tumbleweed (or stable with a bunch of OBS repo's), as he's an enthusiast.
Yo Ung wants to learn to program so she would take Tumbleweed or another
distro like Arch Linux. Stable is too boring, Factory too unstable.
Grand Ma wants a stable system and as Ad also has to take care of the
computers of 8 other family members and wants as little maintenance, he only
upgrades when he HAS to - and complains loudly that the openSUSE release
cycle is too short.
You see, Factory is no competitor for Tumbleweed. They have nothing to do
with each other: people who would consider Tumbleweed don't consider
Factory. Tumbleweed is for people who consider the 8 month release cycle too
slow (like myself) and run many, many OBS repo's (which gets messy).
Meanwhile, the 8 months release cycle is too short for other people like Ad
and his servers and the systems he maintains for his family.
So, yes, Coolo is right: 8 months is both too short and too long. THAT is
why I proposed to have a 12 month cycle with more emphasis on OBS and
Tumbleweed: that is NO longer too short AND too long. Right now, we have
"meat nor fish" as the dutch would say: a real compromise, good for nobody.
*Factory doesn't care*
Yes, for development, all this doesn't matter. It won't make openSUSE
Factory more stable - it probably won't make much difference, other than
that we get less freezes so less stability on average (but that doesn't
matter: it is the release which matters). For the users, this makes a huge
difference: it makes openSUSE a much more viable choice for pretty much
EVERY use case out there.
That's why I argue for a 12 month cycle: better for ALL our users. So if it
doesn't impact development much (as in - the final result would be as stable
and getting it out the door is not any harder) I think we should try to move
to this.
*getting more factory testers*
The key to getting more people to use Factory is to get more users AND get
those users more involved in openSUSE: mentoring, better documentation,
articles to engage people, openSUSE ambassadors at conferences, install
fests, a better atmosphere in the project etcetera. You'll never get Grand
Ma to use factory, she'll just move to Ubuntu LTS, same with Ad. Yo - you
need to teach her how to contribute, than, yes, she'll start helping out.
But we chase her away with our boring 8 month stability - tumbleweed is what
attracts people to our distro!
Please try to look outside of the folks on this mailing list to those
hundreds of potential NEW people for this list... openSUSE will always
continue to loose contributors (people leave, that's a fact of life) and if
we don't have a distro which is actually good for some things as well as
some exciting projects (like tumbleweed!) we'll simply fade into obscurity.
And no, you won't get more Factory testers with that 'strategy'.
/Jos
Togan