Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote: > On 4 March 2010 20:19, James Turnbull <ja...@lovedthanlost.net> > wrote: >>> I am concerned that Epel jumped a major version that enforced so >>> many major changes, but I guess that's our fault for trusting that >>> things would stay the same! :P >>> >> >> I'll let the EPEL guys respond here but they only increment >> releases after extensive testing. > > Yeah, please don't misunderstand me, I'm not blaming EPEL on this > one at all. We should have checked that we were pinned to a version > on Puppet that we knew worked.
This is indeed a tough one and I'm sorry if the update bit folks who weren't expecting it. I definitely would say ensure => present or ensure => $version are good things to have in place. The update announcements are also used to communicate extra information, like the incompatibility between 0.25 clients and older servers. There is an epel-package-announce list¹ that all such package updates are sent and an RSS feed² as well. If we tried to keep the EPEL packages completely compatible for an entire release, the EL-5 packages would be on 0.22 or something. And we'd have lots of calls to update. We'd have a hard time pushing new Fedora packages as well if folks running EL puppetmasters were on 0.24 or older. And it would be very hard to try and backport fixes for bugs that were long since fixed upstream. Not a pleasant place to be all around. :) I don't know how the other EPEL maintainers look at this, but I think a mitigating factor with puppet is that it is still relatively young and that's why it changes a good bit still. After a 1.0 release (or whatever magical milestone number it ends up being), we'll likely have to be more conservative with updates. But we'll also likely be able to rest easily knowing that upstream is happy with that codebase and will probably be supporting it for clients as well. Puppet has grown in use quite a lot over the past year or two as more people discover it and wonder how they ever lived without it. That can make it hard when any incompatible changes are made, but I think the price is worth it in this case. (It's a fine compliment to Luke, Reductive Labs, and all the other great folks who have contributed.) ¹ https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/epel-package-announce http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/epel-package-announce/2010-March/001242.html ² https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/rss/rss2.0?release=EL-5&status=stable -- Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Telephone, n.: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. -- Ambrose Bierce
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