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  • From: Tony Smith <tony AT smee.org>
  • To: Jason Flatt <jasonflatt AT wizard.com>
  • Cc: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] stable/testing branches
  • Date: Tue, 30 Jul 2002 09:37:44 +0100

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On Monday 29 July 2002 8:10 pm, Jason Flatt wrote:
> On Monday 29 July 2002 04:29 am, Tony Smith wrote:
> >
> > You're correct on all counts. If a spell is unchanged for at least 1 week
> > in devel it goes to test. If it remains unchanged for another week in test
> > it goes to stable. It's an imperfect process, but when you consider the
> > resources and the effort required to achieve perfection it's a good
> > balance.
> >
> > Much of the process is historical because when I started producing the
> > test/stable branches we were still recovering from Kyle's unscheduled
> > departure, and a key requirement was not to eat the time of the newly
> > fledged section maintainers. That said, the process has worked very well
so
> > far.
> >
> > Here's what I think is required to produce a truly controlled test/stable
> > branches.
> >
> > 1) Section maintainers must actively test and maintain their spells in all
> > three branches.
> >
> > 2) A mirror of all versions of source code for all packages.
> >
> > Without both of these things, the current system is the best available. It
> > gives us something of value with little extra effort or resource.
> >
> > Tony
>
>
> Hmm, this is interesting from my perspective. As the maintainer of the ham
> and printer sections, I feel that in order to accurately test the various
> spells in my sections, including and especially dependencies, I feel that I
> need four clean installations: 1) no X windows, 2) plain X windows, 3) KDE
> and 4) GNOME. Now, if I take that with what you have suggested in your
point
> 1, I have to triple that to include clean installations for the four
> situations listed above in devel, test and stable. Whew! That's a lot!
> As
> I currently only have one computer, I think I would need to get another
> computer (with a huge hard drive) just for the testing of Source Mage. I'm
> not necessarily looking for a fix, I'm just trying to pick my jaw up off of
> the floor. :^)

:-) Yep, it's definitely non-trivial. That's why the current approach finds a
good balance between stability and practicality. I've yet to hear a sound
argument for investing the resources and effort needed to do this perfectly.
This is especially true when you consider:

a) if a cast fails you still have the old version (new spells excepted)
b) if a cast you really need fails, you can debug it and make it happen
c) you can put critical spells on hold

Tony.
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