On Fri, May 9, 2025 at 8:54 AM Steve George <st...@futurile.net> wrote: > [...] > Adding a slower-moving branch akin to Nix's stable could be an eventual goal > as > it would increase Guix's suitability for some users and use-cases [^2]. > However, > this GCD only sets out to implement regular releases which is a substantial > change that would be a big improvement for our users. [...]
This is a proposal for a beautiful release process. The process is detailed and well thought out, but without stability these beautiful releases quickly decay to our status quo. And I agree that we do not have the capacity to maintain two branches (though it could solve our naming issue). 1) It seems a waste to synchronize around a point-in-time beautiful release only to have this break on the user's first pull. And builds will quickly break when the freeze is lifted and the backlog unblocked. The alternative to a pull is to forego security updates for a year until the next release. 2) The project is currently unable to keep up with the teams workflow, and now we are introducing an additional, quite long pause into the calendar. 3) Package cleanup is a problem that I believe we are afraid to address. I agree that we should not have package "ownership", but perhaps "sponsorship" or (to borrow from this GCD) "advocate" with notifications when builds break on CI. I believe this proposal is too aggressive in pruning packages without considering alternatives (in another GCD). I think we should greatly reduce the scope and initially try (as I noted in December buried in the "On the quest for a new release model" discussion) creating a release team which would: 1) operate as any other team 2) be responsible only for building and improving release artifacts 3) operate with a cadence sufficient to build and retain this expertise (which would currently be one cycle of the queue, but ideally every ~3-4 months) By using the teams queue everyone will know when the release is coming, and whether their branch will be merged before or after the next release. Greg
