Friends, Is there yet an Official 1.3 CD-ROM available from anywhere? Is it bootable? I concur with many of you that it is *very* important to have an "official" cd-rom, not primarily becase SPI could bring in a little dough, but rather because you just don't know what you're getting when you get a CD. I was recently considering buying the Cheap Bytes CD. There wasn't that much on their web site about what *exactly* was on the CD. I emailed them and asked a lot of questions: When were the files for the image downloaded? Do you have the stable, contrib, and non-free DIRs? And they could not provide sufficient answers. They couldn't tell me exactly when the snapshot was taken.
Unfortunately, with the way things are done right now, this is very important. This is because usually when a release is announced, there are still a lot of problems. (Ok, less in 1.3 there there were in 1.2.) This problem could be solved if there was an Official image released by SPI. Now, if we're going to do this we'll also need to either A) include a minor rev number (1.3.X) which actually means something or B) at least include a production date or C) change our Release Methodology. Now Bruce, I know my comments are going to frustrate you. I know that it is impossible (without hiring legions of testers, and even then you can still only get 98% of the way there) to make a release which is "perfect" because in point of fact the release doesn't really get tested until everyone downloads it and trys to install it. No, I'm not accusing the developers of not testing their stuff. I have the utmost confidence that they do their able best to test their stuff before calling it released. However, I am a software developer myself and I know that in any complex system it is a near impossible task to test every case and scenario of a system. You do your best and then let it go. So, what changes am I suggesting for the Release Methodology? Well, it would be presumptuous of me to suggest changes when I don't know what is currently in place. I would suggest that a few basic procedures be followed though. When a change to a package is released, have two people **other than** the maintainer test it. One should upgrade an existing package, the other should install it "fresh". When a release is being put together, have a number of people install it from scratch on a clean system. Now of course we'll need volunteers for this. Now although I don't have time to maintain a package, I'd be more than happy to be a package tester for one or two. I'd also be happy to be a test release installer. I have a spare 150MB IDE disk and I'd be glad to test-install releases before they become official. I think we should have sign-ups for both of these functions just as we do for the package mainainer-ships. Comments? -- Jens B. Jorgensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
