On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 21:24 -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:

> I'm concerned about the policies which allow unstable software in
> stable Fedora releases. Is it considered acceptable/encouraged to
> have alpha versions of software in the stable release? Is there any
> policy?

There is no policy, its up to the individual maintainer to use their
best judgement as to what should be included.

~spot

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On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 09:24:48PM -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:
> Fedora 8 shipped with an BIND 9.5.0a6, recently updated to 9.5.0a7.
> The release announcement for BIND says:
>
> BIND 9.5.0a7 is a alpha release for BIND 9.5.0.
>
> This is a technology preview of new functionality to be be
> released in BIND 9.5.0. New APIs are not yet frozen.
>
> Is this an appropriate release to be putting in a stable Fedora
> release? I've encounted a segfault in this version, which I've
> reported here:
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=400461
>
> I'm concerned about the policies which allow unstable software in
> stable Fedora releases. Is it considered acceptable/encouraged to
> have alpha versions of software in the stable release? Is there any
> policy?
>
> Thanks.

I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
bugs is tax for them. Additionally I don't think that users use newest
Fedora on important servers and 9.5 will come into beta stage very
soon.

Adam

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Adam Tkac wrote:
> I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
> bugs is tax for them.

> 9.5 will come into beta stage very soon.

These two are quite valid reasons that you as maintainer are the person
best qualified to make a decision about. Thank you for providing them!



I don't think that users use newest
Fedora on important servers


This one, however, is not a reason to use in making these decisions.
People may want to use the newest Fedora on their important servers and
if so, we want them to be able to. This is something we should strive
for consciously even if subconsciously we decide to let another feature
slip in ;-)


-Toshio

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On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 04:25:35PM +0100, Adam Tkac wrote:
> I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
> bugs is tax for them. Additionally I don't think that users use newest
> Fedora on important servers and 9.5 will come into beta stage very
> soon.

I use the newest Fedora on important servers. They were running FC6
before, and the EOL is approaching soon. I'd rather upgrade once to
F8 now rather than F7 now and then again to F8 when F9 is released. I
guess that was a bad decision on my part, but I've never had major
problems on servers with the latest Fedora before. I've been testing
F8 as Rawhide for a while now, so I thought it was ready for my
servers. Unfortunately, I didn't test BIND--slap my wrist for that
one. Of course, who knows if I would have encountered this problem in
a test server--it may be related to the load one puts on the server
that would never have been seen in a test environment.

I don't mind beta software and release candidates of software in a
stable Fedora release--heck lots of software stays in that phase for a
long long time (ISC dhcpd for example). But alpha software I think is
pushing it a bit too far. This is just my opinion, and I will work
around whatever problems I cause for myself by using the latest Fedora
on my important servers, but the lack of a policy on this makes it
hard for sysadmins to choose correctly. Now it seems that the choice
should be "always run the previous Fedora release because the newest
one might introduce new software that is considered alpha quality by
upstream".

It is a fine line to walk on stability vs. new features. Fedora is
about being on the leading edge, sure. But bleeding edge should be
reserved for Rawhide and Test releases. Especially for software as
important as BIND and DHCP.

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On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 07:57:18AM -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Adam Tkac wrote:
> > I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
> > bugs is tax for them.
>
> > 9.5 will come into beta stage very soon.
>
> These two are quite valid reasons that you as maintainer are the person
> best qualified to make a decision about. Thank you for providing them!
>
>> I don't think that users use newest
>> Fedora on important servers
>
> This one, however, is not a reason to use in making these decisions. People
> may want to use the newest Fedora on their important servers and if so, we
> want them to be able to. This is something we should strive for
> consciously even if subconsciously we decide to let another feature slip in
> ;-)

Generally you have to choose between stability and features. And I've
chosen features in this case...

Adam

>
> -Toshio
>
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On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 11:03:02AM -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 04:25:35PM +0100, Adam Tkac wrote:
> > I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
> > bugs is tax for them. Additionally I don't think that users use newest
> > Fedora on important servers and 9.5 will come into beta stage very
> > soon.
>
> I use the newest Fedora on important servers. They were running FC6
> before, and the EOL is approaching soon. I'd rather upgrade once to
> F8 now rather than F7 now and then again to F8 when F9 is released. I
> guess that was a bad decision on my part, but I've never had major
> problems on servers with the latest Fedora before. I've been testing
> F8 as Rawhide for a while now, so I thought it was ready for my
> servers. Unfortunately, I didn't test BIND--slap my wrist for that
> one. Of course, who knows if I would have encountered this problem in
> a test server--it may be related to the load one puts on the server
> that would never have been seen in a test environment.

I'm using 9.5 on my machine long time and I didn't found discussed
problem (#400461)

> I don't mind beta software and release candidates of software in a
> stable Fedora release--heck lots of software stays in that phase for a
> long long time (ISC dhcpd for example). But alpha software I think is
> pushing it a bit too far. This is just my opinion, and I will work
> around whatever problems I cause for myself by using the latest Fedora
> on my important servers, but the lack of a policy on this makes it
> hard for sysadmins to choose correctly. Now it seems that the choice
> should be "always run the previous Fedora release because the newest
> one might introduce new software that is considered alpha quality by
> upstream".

As I wrote above BIND will come to beta very soon. And your bug is
first more important issue that I've got reported since F8 final.

>
> It is a fine line to walk on stability vs. new features. Fedora is
> about being on the leading edge, sure. But bleeding edge should be
> reserved for Rawhide and Test releases. Especially for software as
> important as BIND and DHCP.
>
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> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list

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On 11/27/2007 03:29 AM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:

On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 21:24 -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:

I'm concerned about the policies which allow unstable software in
stable Fedora releases. Is it considered acceptable/encouraged to
have alpha versions of software in the stable release? Is there any
policy?


There is no policy, its up to the individual maintainer to use their
best judgement as to what should be included.


It's hard to make judgements without having any criteria to judge upon.
We don't need to have a strict policy, but I think it would be useful
to have some loose guidelines.


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Adam Tkac wrote:

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 07:57:18AM -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:

Adam Tkac wrote:

I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
bugs is tax for them.
9.5 will come into beta stage very soon.
These two are quite valid reasons that you as maintainer are the person
best qualified to make a decision about. Thank you for providing them!



I don't think that users use newest
Fedora on important servers
This one, however, is not a reason to use in making these decisions. People
may want to use the newest Fedora on their important servers and if so, we
want them to be able to. This is something we should strive for
consciously even if subconsciously we decide to let another feature slip in
;-)


Generally you have to choose between stability and features. And I've
chosen features in this case...

Excellent. As stated before, you, the maintainer are best qualified to
judge how stable this release is and whether the perception of it being
an "alpha release" or the new features it brings are more important.
Your testing of the new version and not getting any significant bug
reports before F8 release are valid reasons to believe the package is
stable enough for Fedora.


I just want to stress that we're working hard to keep people from
thinking of Fedora as "a beta release of RHEL". As part of that "I
don't think that users use newest Fedora on important servers" is *not*
a reason we want to promote for making decisions on whether a particular
upstream version is stable enough to go into a Fedora release.


Thank you for understanding the subtle distinction here,
-Toshio

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On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 17:43 +0100, Christopher Aillon wrote:
> On 11/27/2007 03:29 AM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 21:24 -0500, Chuck Anderson wrote:
> >
> >> I'm concerned about the policies which allow unstable software in
> >> stable Fedora releases. Is it considered acceptable/encouraged to
> >> have alpha versions of software in the stable release? Is there any
> >> policy?
> >
> > There is no policy, its up to the individual maintainer to use their
> > best judgement as to what should be included.
>
> It's hard to make judgements without having any criteria to judge upon.
> We don't need to have a strict policy, but I think it would be useful
> to have some loose guidelines.

Such as? Open to suggestions here.

~spot

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On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 09:36:17AM -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Adam Tkac wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 07:57:18AM -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>>> Adam Tkac wrote:
>>>> I've put this software to F8 because it has nice new features. Some
>>>> bugs is tax for them.
>>>> 9.5 will come into beta stage very soon.
>>> These two are quite valid reasons that you as maintainer are the person
>>> best qualified to make a decision about. Thank you for providing them!
>>>
>>>> I don't think that users use newest
>>>> Fedora on important servers
>>> This one, however, is not a reason to use in making these decisions.
>>> People may want to use the newest Fedora on their important servers and
>>> if so, we want them to be able to. This is something we should strive
>>> for consciously even if subconsciously we decide to let another feature
>>> slip in ;-)
>>
>> Generally you have to choose between stability and features. And I've
>> chosen features in this case...
>>
> Excellent. As stated before, you, the maintainer are best qualified to
> judge how stable this release is and whether the perception of it being an
> "alpha release" or the new features it brings are more important. Your
> testing of the new version and not getting any significant bug reports
> before F8 release are valid reasons to believe the package is stable enough
> for Fedora.
>
> I just want to stress that we're working hard to keep people from thinking
> of Fedora as "a beta release of RHEL". As part of that "I don't think that
> users use newest Fedora on important servers" is *not* a reason we want to
> promote for making decisions on whether a particular upstream version is
> stable enough to go into a Fedora release.

Definitely. I've never said Fedora is testing ground for RHEL. I want
point that Fedora has new features and new features mean bugs so you
cannot expect such stability like RHEL. And I also believe all
maintainers put new releases into Fedora because they have good reasons
(not only because "release exists" )

Adam

>
> Thank you for understanding the subtle distinction here,
> -Toshio
>
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