[maemo-developers] Application Manager and Extras-devel: Dealing with unstable software

[From: Marius Vollmer]

"ext gary liquid" <liquid at gmail.com> writes:

> i don't think I follow with this extremely limited -devel testing
> cycle route, especially since *anyone* (even seasoned professionals)
> who connect to -devel at this point for however short a period run the
> overriding risk of screwing up their system.

Looking from the outside, and again judging from the way extras-devel is
setup, I would expect extras-devel to contain packages of high quality
that only rarely cause trouble.  Otherwise, extras-devel loses its value
as a testing ground because nobody uses it regularily.

This is the problem that Ryan has brought up, and I think the answer is
that extras-devel must be of sufficient quality that enough people
(roughly the same that are subscribed here) feel confident to use it
instead of extras.

The difference between extras-devel and extras is the difference between
I-think-it's-good-because-it-works-perfectly-for-me and
I-am-quite-sure-it's-good-because-some-hundred-people-didn't-have-any-problems-with-it.
In my view, at least.

> If I push it via -devel at this point a seasoned professional
> developer can screw up his system with one idle update ("oh cool, new
> canola").

This would be the core of the problem, I'd say.  There really
shouldn't be anything lingering in extras-devel that is known to kill
people's systems.

If you put something into extras-devel that turns out to cause problems,
you need to fix it "immediately".