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Revision as of 00:54, 9 March 2010 by Pfrields (talk | contribs) (A few minor edits to make the logic clearer)

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Stable Release Update Vision

Background

Recent discussions on various Fedora mailing lists have shown that we currently have a wide variety of positions on what Fedora's update strategy should look like. These range from a 'rolling' release, to a locked down security-only update solution. The lack of clarity on this is contributing to confusion among package maintainers and end users alike. While everyone agrees that broken updates are detrimental to the Fedora distribution and should be avoided at all costs, there is no agreement on how to accomplish that nor is there agreement on what is an acceptable update. In light of this, the Fedora Board is issuing a stable release update vision statement to help guide the creation and implementation of a Fedora Updates policy.

Factors

When creating an updates overview, there are some factors that need to be taken into account. The first, and foremost, is keeping in mind the broad criteria the Board set out for the entire Fedora distribution, which describe someone who:

  1. is voluntarily switching to Linux
  2. is familiar with computers but is not necessarily a hacker or developer
  3. is likely to collaborate in some fashion when something's wrong with Fedora, and
  4. wants to use Fedora for general productivity, either using desktop applications or a Web browser.

A shifting platform and visible behavioral changes will affect the user's productivity becuase the user must take time away from the desired tasks to learn how to engage in supporting tasks. Because productivity is postulated as important to this user, this outcome is undesirable. Similarly, dealing with a large number of updates on a regular basis is distracting from the user's desired productivity tasks. Also, while a user fitting these criteria is likely to file a bug when something goes wrong, the user does not therefore automatically expect new issues to emerge in a stable release as a result of consuming updates offered authoritatively. When such issues do emerge, the user's confidence in the platform is undermined.

Another factor to keep in mind is Fedora's rapid development cycle. A six month development cycle for a release allows Fedora to integrate the latest and greatest releases from upstream projects into the 'rawhide' distribution and have that body of work available to the user base in a relatively short amount of time. Ideally, this rapid paced release cycle allows both developers and users the chance to focus on a coherent, consistent, and well functioning set of software content per release.

Vision Statement

Taking the background and various factors above into account, the Board believes update streams should be managed with the following purposes:

  • The update repositories for stable releases of the Fedora distribution should provide our users with a consistent and high quality stream of updates.
  • Stable releases should provide a consistent user experience throughout the lifecycle, and concentrate on fixing bugs and security issues.
  • Close tracking of upstream should be done both through coordinating patch acceptance upstream, and by tracking the upstream version closely in Rawhide wherever possible.
  • More skilled and/or intrepid users should be encouraged to use Rawhide along with participating in testing of stable branches during the pre-release period.
  • The approach given to stable releases, pre-release branches, and Rawhide should have a graduated approach to updates. For instance, given a proposed update that does more than fix a bug or security issue, it should not be easier to push that update to a stable release than to a pre-release branch or Rawhide.