Steve Grubb wrote:

> OK, here is what upstream said:

Thanks for the persistence and followup.

>>> 1) Is this (kdepim-enterprise-svn20070926.tar.bz2) an officially
>>> supported release?
>>
>>No, it says "svn" which means it was a development snapshot.
>>We do have some snapshots which we consider good for testing
>>which which some people use in production (as testing) and packagers
>>might want to pick up for the "test" builds, check
>>http://apt.intevation.de/dists/etch/unstable/source/

That's news to me. When I asked, I was told there was no "release" and to
pull from subversion. Glad to hear otherwise.

> Question: are we using this as our source? Should we sync up with their
> recommendations?

Makes sense.

>>> 2) How much testing goes into a tarball like this before a release?
>>
>>We did not release this tarball, it seems to have been a snapshot
>>quality control depends on the one who created it.
>>
>>The ones that you can find in the mentioned "unstable" apt directory above
>>have seen internal testing. This consists of testing towards the new
>>feature and a basic test that covers some core functionality.

Make sense +2. I'm curious exactly "internal testing" exactly means, but
either way, it's better than a random snapshot with no "internal testing".

>>> 3) Did you make any kind of announcement that this was ready to be used
>>> by end users?
>>
>>No.

Sorry if you've already heard this before, but it's worth repeating: I was
told at akademy of kdepim-enterprise's existence, by several of it's
developers, and urged to strongly consider using this (in fedora).

> Observation: Since they are not announcing anything about a feature being
> complete, a snapshot on a random day could catch something half patched.

fwiw, I watch the commits, make an effort to get "good" snapshots, but point
taken.

>>> 4) Is this release stable enough for a business to run on?
>>
>>I cannot say, it depends who created the snapshot
>>and what promisses were made for it. Probably not.
>
> So, if you use Fedora's kmail, the upstream *developers* say it not stable
> enough to use for production. By taking snaps on random days, we are on
> our own. I rest my case....

I think we can all agree that random snapshots are bad, and it's nice to be
made aware of uptream's semi-official, internally tested, tarball
snapshots.

Would switching to their snapshots instead of our own random ones, satisfy
most/all of your concerns?

-- Rex

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On Monday 10 December 2007 10:48:23 Rex Dieter wrote:
> > So, if you use Fedora's kmail, the upstream *developers* say it not
> > stable enough to use for production. By taking snaps on random days, we
> > are on our own. I rest my case....
>
> I think we can all agree that random snapshots are bad, and it's nice to be
> made aware of uptream's semi-official, internally tested, tarball
> snapshots.

I'd try to work out something with upstream that they maybe announce a new
testing snapshot in that directory. Someone said other distros are using it,
so you can't be alone in wanting some feedback on when you can test a
new "release". Somehow I'd think we need to account for that location as the
pickup point inside the specfile so others know where this came from.


> Would switching to their snapshots instead of our own random ones, satisfy
> most/all of your concerns?

That depends on if a new kdepim package suddenly quits working for me in
F8.

Thanks,
-Steve

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Steve Grubb <sgrubb <at> redhat.com> writes:
> I think I would have voted for sitting on the current package. The
> enterprise branch is very, very different.

We know it is, that's why there was no way to backport whatever fixed the IMAP
bug in 3.5.7 (or rather: made it not be there in the first place, AFAIK the
enterprise branch never had that particular bug). The IMAP code there is
significantly different and the difference which matters here is certainly one
of the big internal reorganizations.

> > (We considered reverting kdepim to 3.5.6, but there were other changes in
> > 3.5.7 we didn't want to revert, e.g. in KitchenSync.)
>
> You can't - literally. KDE modifies its configuration. You would need the old
> config saved away on a per version directory.

Actually it depends. In the worst case, yes, reverting leads to broken
configurations. In others it works. For 3.5.7->3.5.6, KitchenSync would have
been likely to have configuration problems because of the significant changes,
KMail not so much. But reverting from the enterprise branch to a 3.5.x would be
likely to break things, which is another good reason for continuing with that
branch. :-)

Kevin Kofler

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