Re: [opensuse-packaging] A doubt about java rpms

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

Aschwin Marsman writes:

...

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, Andreas Jaeger wrote:

...

10.0 is a done deal, we're not going to add version updates for it - we're fixing security bugs only,

This is the thing I would like to have changed: create a package of software, give it a label (10.0) and then go on to create the next package and only do security updates.

There is no technical reason why e.g. vim 6.4 (there is a source rpm for it for 10.1 alpha) won't be released for 10.0. I would love to have a stable base (10.0, it's much better than 9.3 to my opinion) and then improve it incrementally. The big plus for e.g. Debian is that you can upgrade by only installing packages without the need to use a e.g. boot cdrom which is not so easy when you have installed you're software on remote locations.

Is this strategy open for discussion or is there a Novell veto for it (I could take away some SLES customers)?

The problem I see is where to make a boundary:

* Any update, even a minor one, might break existing software

As a start you can only update package which are at the leaves of the dependancy tree, no programs are depending on them. For e.g. vim 6.4 is the same as vim 6.3 including patches, no new developments that are done for 6.4. New developments are done for vim 7: spell checking, additional data types for use in vim script, intellisense like feature etc. but this is currently under development, mainly by Bram Moolenaar. So without problems you can update vim-6.3.84-2 to vim-6.4.x. The same will do for a lot of other packages. It would be nice for a start that you can build a openSUSE 10.1rc... src rpm for openSUSE 10.0, like Debian stable, testing, unstable: you have a choice.

* What do you define as stable base? Some people might like to see glibc and GCC updated as well.

This is possible if it's binary compatible.

We're working hard to keep our development base really stable - this is a change for us since earlier where our development base was internally we did break it

How does Debian handle this? We might learn something from them: and no, I'm not advocating a stable version for openSUSE like the Debian stable: this changes too slow. Let's keep the best things of openSUSE and try to improve it evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Andreas

Best regards from the Netherlands, Aschwin Marsman -- aschwin@marsman.org http://www.marsman.org