[maemo-developers] Backwards compatibility broken PR1.1 SDK

[From: Graham Cobb]

On Wednesday 20 January 2010 16:32:23 Jeff Moe wrote:
> For what it's worth, in the Fedora buildsystem (Koji), the buildsystem is
> running with the latest updates. Perhaps investigating what the various
> other distros do (especially Debian) and doing what they do would be a good
> approach (if they have mostly all settled on similar approaches).

Jeff, thanks for the input -- we certainly need to take a look at what other 
projects do.

I am most familiar with Debian.  There the challenge is very different.  
Debian, like many distributions, is geared to creating periodic releases 
containing a consistent set of packages.  It chooses to maximise stability 
and, to some extent, quality by sacrificing time to release and, to some 
extent, openness (only DD's can submit packages).  The consistent and tested 
set of packages are then not touched (apart from critical security patches) 
for the next 18 months or so while the next release is prepared.  That is not 
the model the Maemo community members want as they want to be able to create 
and launch new applications and new versions of applications in days, not 
months.

Debian testing is closer to the release goals of Maemo (although still quite 
far away -- it takes a long time for something to propagate into testing and 
relatively few new packages are added).  But Debian testing requires frequent 
updates of all parts of the system, and no guarantees of support.  The Debian 
community is very clear that only people who can tolerate occasional broken 
systems, and continuous change, should install testing.

As each project has different goals, and constraints, the decisions made 
around process (including how builds and repositories work, who can submit 
code, how QA works, etc.) are going to be very different.  But suggestions or 
comments from people familiar with how other projects work are certainly 
welcome.  I *think* that, here in Maemo, we are trying to create a model with 
different goals from any of the other distributions, so our decisions may 
also be different, but I certainly want us to learn from other experience.

Graham