Feature changed by: nick skeen (ns89) Feature #310712, revision 4 Title: Constantly usable Factory openSUSE-11.4: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Christoph Obexer (cobexer) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: I recently read about the Debain CUT project, ( http://cut.debian.net/ (http://cut.debian.net/) , http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut/ (http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/debian/cut/) ) looking at the current situation with openSuSE Factory i see that it is dangerous to use, unstable alpha or beta packages come into Factory all the time, while other packages become out of date. The result is a system that is pretty much unusable. Only allowing stable packages to enter Factory would make that a lot better, and if one finds bugs chances are that those bugs aren't already fixed in a newer svn/git snapshot, but are real bugs. This would save a lot of time for testers and developers in dealing with "invalid", or "temporary" bugs. I think that a robust, "stable" Factory would lead to more people using it full time and thus a better quality of the next openSuSE version. I see that this would have negative aspects as well, but i think most devel projects have unstable/testing repositories set up already and those could still contain the snapshots of upcoming versions, testers of those specific projects could use tose repositories then. Doing a release of openSuSE would be easier then too, simply snapshot Factory, and declare it as openSuSE $VERSION. The transition from the current state to a "constantly usable Factory" would be smooth too. And it's also in line with the openSuSE vision, stable rather than bleeding edge. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: More users using Factory -> better stability of Factory -
better stability of openSuSE $VERSION -> openSuSE back where it should be - the Linux for professionals.
Discussion: #1: Rajko Matovic (rajko_m) (2010-10-17 06:35:48) I guess that the idea is to provide fallback options to the users, so that they can actually use test system without need for IT degree. Factory should have answers to the: * It doesn't boot. What now? * Desktop is freezing. What now? * Software ABC v.1.0 works, v. 1.1 doesn't. What now? Insisting that one should help debugging problems is a noble goal, but the largest part of the openSUSE users can help only by installing working version and reporting that. That is not much, but it is much more then no feedback at all. On the other hand, simple idea is not that simple to apply in the practice. There are examples where some new functionality is applied to the base system and some software will not work properly until their developers apply that. How long distribution should wait? There is only few people in openSUSE that have knowledge to think about the problem and propose options. + #2: nick skeen (ns89) (2010-10-17 22:09:20) + Perhaps there should be a "stable" and "unstable" factory. The unstable + factory would be like the current factory and the "stable" factory + would have files that are the latest known working versions. + Another way of putting this is the current factory would be for alpha + testing and the known working factory would be for beta testing. + Of course if that is done OpenSUSE would become a rolling release. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310712