+++ Joey Hess [05-10-09 12:45 -0400]: > Anyway, I just wanted to open this up for discussion to make sure we've > considered all sides of the issue and aren't plowing ahead with > recertification just because it's the Thing To Do.
Sensible. I don't think we will actually find it difficult to requalify, as people seem to be coming forward to take up the fairly hefty amount of slack that has built up over the last couple of years. But equally there is no point spending our valuable time on a release that is barely used. > I don't know whether arm will be able to meet the criteria to be > released with etch or not. My question to you is, even assuming we can > qualify, is there enough value in a stable Debian release for arm to > justify the additional load that releasing another architecture will put > on the release, security, installer, etc teams? > > Or would using testing and/or snapshots for arm deployment work well > enough for most Debian arm users? I know that testing has been fine for > us at ADS as the base for our Debian arm releases. I doubt there are a > lot of people running arm on serious servers, and so I question whether > those using arm for the more or less embedded type stuff that's common > for this architecture really need a stable release. Some people seemed > to agree on irc that this was becoming practical now that testing is > starting to get things like security support. Comments? > > The other side of that question is whether, if Debian didn't target the > arm port at stable, Debian testing would remain in a usable state for > arm. Some of the current issues obviously need to be addressed anyway > for arm to be a viable Debian architecture of any sort. I'm not sure quite what to say about this. There are quite a few installed arm boxes direclty exposed to the net working as firewalls/routers/print servers etc. Netwinder used to have this role largely to itself, but now there are MANGA boxen and some people use CATS and Basts this way too. The etchreleasqualification wiki page should actually give us a much better idea of what people _are_ using Debian for than we have had for some time. Please fill it in, and get other people who are using boxes to do the same. tell relevant mailing lists - this is an opportunity to do a bit of a survey. And then there are all the NSLU2 boxes, which are currently mostly using an OpenEmbedded firmware build but are likely to start moving over to armeb soon. And now the ethernet driver is getting fixed maybe some will use old-arm too. The armeb people are starting with stable as their initial target, presumably because it is not a moving target. Many of these are classic servers which don't get fiddled with often at which stable is targetted. So stable probably is being used, and after a period of decline is perhaps going to be used more that it was? On the other hand, some portion of those users would be happy with testing and the associated churn. Some would prefer it as they want to be up-to-date. Which leaves the question 'what portion'? There are also hordes of things like the WRTG54 which don't have the storage for Debian-proper. We can probably ignore them to a large extent, but the people who make such things form a good chunk of the Debian arm development community, and use our codebase to make their products. For them stable itself is probably not relevant - they will pick testing/unstable snapshots to make thie rimages/releases. So, my feeling is that there is a reasonable chunk of users out there, probably actually a growing chunk at the moment, who want a 'stable' security-maintained release for their boxes. This could probably be provided by 'snapshots' as opposed to the official stable, but I wonder if we might then end up with more work supporting various snapshots (perhaps each little community (manga, NSLU2, cats, netwinder) trying to support the particular snapshot they picked). That actually sounds like more work (more archives to maintain, now-disappeared packages to provide security for), and could reduce the collective effects of putting fixes back in a central bucket. The advantage is that we can do it without affecting the rest of Debian, and would give producers more flexibility in terms of picking a snapshot they liked. The deadlines of a stable release also helps motivate people to actually do things rather than put them off. I worry that if we lived in a perpetual 'testing' land things would be even worse than they are now. So, I'll defer judgement till we have a bit more feedback about our users and people developeing using a Debian base, but my current inclination is to say that it is worth maintaining a stable release. If the various people who have made noises about helping can stick around reasonably consistently, then I'd hope that we would gain maximum collective benefit that way. Hmm, bit of a teatise, hope it was worth reading. Comments welcome. Wookey -- Aleph One Ltd, Bottisham, CAMBRIDGE, CB5 9BA, UK Tel +44 (0) 1223 811679 work: http://www.aleph1.co.uk/ play: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~wookey/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
