Re: Stable tag will be slipped Sunday and release engineering will begin Monday

[Chris Pressey <cpressey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04 Apr 2005 18:58:05 GMT
Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Bill Hacker wrote:
> >Chris Pressey wrote:
> >> On 04 Apr 2005 07:11:25 GMT
> >> Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Similarly, if one doesn't upgrade the system for 10 months,
> >"apt-get >>upgrade" or "apt-get dist-upgrade" just *works*, you
> >rapidly have an >>uptodate system.
> >>
> >>
> >> One thing I'd like to find out is whether this is due to
> >technological > or QA factors.  I suspect it's mostly the latter,
> >although there are > probably some technical aspects that foster it,
> >too. >
> >> -Chris
> >
> >It is largely QA and a firm hand *about* QA in Debian's case.
> 
> It's both QA and the technology.

I believe that... I guess what I was thinking was, the only part we can
"borrow", is the technology.  The QA comes down to sheer amount of
volunteer effort.

The question is, _what_ is that technology?  I've only used Debian a
tiny bit, so I can only make educated guesses at this point.

> >The traditional *BSD methods, be they port, package, or direct build,
> >are far more forgiving and resilient - and generally easier to
> >troubleshoot, fix, or work around to keep current.
> 
> Bill, I don't think you've actually used Debian.  Try it and see.
> As for me, "resilient" is not the word I would think of when
> considering the FreeBSD ports tree.  I remember at least 2 serious
> snafus (involving libpng and gettext), and have forgotten dozens of
> minor hiccups, in my 4-5 years of using FreeBSD.  Usually nowadays,
> when such a major disruptive upgrade happens, detailed portupgrade
> instructions are posted on the lists, and things still seem to go
> wrong for users.

My main gripe with ports is that it is so open-ended (port creators can
basically do whatever they like so long as it's possible to describe it
in a Makefile) and badly insulated (most of my problems have come from
something bad unintentionally set in my environment and/or make.conf,
for example.)  This makes it difficult to do QA on.

My impression (and it's only an impression) is that the apt stuff is
more predictable/better regimented, making it easier to do QA on.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but I'd much prefer a system for which
there is correspondingly less *need* to "troubleshoot, fix, or work
around" ;)

-Chris