Obviously 9.1 is almost out the door and there is nothing even in
Mandrake's power to change that. But in following this thread, I do see
a lot of value in moving to a Debian style Stable/Unstable model. The
additional overhead would not be that great and there would be many
benefits.
Overhead would be mostly additional storage requirements for the
mirrors. Actual bandwidth would not be effected all that much as most
people would follow either stable or unstable, but not both.
Benefits would be:
1) The stable version would always be sitting there in up to date
status ready for deployment when the time comes to go to press.
2) The stable version would provide an optional test bed for the
developer who might want to lift his particular project out of the
unstable version and plant it in the stable version for testing. For
example, he might be trying to debug a 3D game at just the time XFree or
the kernel is going through an unstable period and this would allow him
an up to date but stable test bed.
3) The stable version would always be available for a continual QA
effort. This would allow those volunteers who prefer to debug to pump
their reports through bugzilla without constantly running into 'yes, we
know there is a problem and we are working on it.' There is a certain
futility to trying to debug a version that is unstable in the first place.
4) The stable version would enable ordinary Mandrake users to upgrade
continually rather than having to endure one massive enema everytime a
new release comes along.
5) The stable version could have its own cooker mailing list for those
more interested in QA issues than pushing the envelope. They could have
a lot of active discussions without potentially wasting the time of
developers who could concentrate on their own efforts on the unstable list.
6) The unstable version would never have to endure freezes as all
releases would derive from the stable version.
7) The unstable version could take even more 'risks' without incurring
situations of having to 'back up' in order to 'make' a release date.
8) The unstable list could eliminate bugzilla chatter and concentrate
on development issues as bugzilla chatter would move to the stable list.
9) The daring fools could still draw from the unstable list in order to
continue to satiate their thirst for thrills.
10) Alpha and Beta versions of various components could be confined to
the unstable version where testing could continue, but they would be
prevented from getting into the stable version. Users who so desire
could immediately download them from the stable version when they
install from CD.
Just more food for thought. Feel free to tear it apart.
