[NEWS] 2008.0_beta2 released

Message

96140 · Post by **96140** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 6:15 am

Nothing's been out of date the whole release cycle -- as the release media and options change, I update the handbooks, both networked and networkless. Note that /handbook/ is for the networked handbook, and /handbook/2008.0/ is the networkless handbook -- don't mix 'em up or assume we're missing one, I mean.

Pretty soon I'll be making changes to the live handbooks to match the ones I created for the installation CDs, once we're ready for the final release, which is mostly changing "2008.0_beta2" to "2008.0". The handbooks really are kept up to date.

minor_prophets · Post by **minor_prophets** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:16 pm

06/30/08 seems like a great day for a major release!
;p

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:17 pm

minor_prophets wrote:06/23/08 seems like a great day for a major release!

Sorry, the release is a week from today - http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/re ... /index.xml ;/

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:28 pm

nightmorph wrote:Nothing's been out of date the whole release cycle -- as the release media and options change, I update the handbooks, both networked and networkless. Note that /handbook/ is for the networked handbook, and /handbook/2008.0/ is the networkless handbook -- don't mix 'em up or assume we're missing one, I mean.

Pretty soon I'll be making changes to the live handbooks to match the ones I created for the installation CDs, once we're ready for the final release, which is mostly changing "2008.0_beta2" to "2008.0". The handbooks really are kept up to date.

Do you know if the mktemp/coreutils blocker will be resolved on the release stage?

96140 · Post by **96140** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:02 am

AidanJT wrote:Do you know if the mktemp/coreutils blocker will be resolved on the release stage?

Yup. I downloaded one of our releng snapshots to verify. The stable version is from the 6.10 series, and that's the one that doesn't need coreutils, so things should be fine.

The blocker was one of the reasons we had to re-roll snapshots from scratch -- that and a few surprise security issues to backport fixes to. It's nice having a distro that's pretty speedy about releasing security advisories and fixes, but gosh darn can it get in the way of release cycles. At least we're not Xubuntu, whose CDs are still vulnerable to the RSA key issues from a few months back . . . they never re-rolled 'em.

tanderson · Post by **tanderson** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:08 am

nightmorph wrote:
AidanJT wrote:Do you know if the mktemp/coreutils blocker will be resolved on the release stage?
...and that's the one that doesn't need coreutils or Linux or X11, so we removed them from Gentoo, so things should be fine.

Fixed that for ya

That said, I'm really glad that they redid the release media to avoid the blocker. Not that it would affect me(I've avoided the blocker on 3 machines), but those who have no idea why this occured and pop into #gentoo and ask why it happened.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:38 pm

nightmorph wrote:
AidanJT wrote:Do you know if the mktemp/coreutils blocker will be resolved on the release stage?
Yup. I downloaded one of our releng snapshots to verify. The stable version is from the 6.10 series, and that's the one that doesn't need coreutils, so things should be fine.

The blocker was one of the reasons we had to re-roll snapshots from scratch -- that and a few surprise security issues to backport fixes to.<snip>

Thanks nightmorph, good to know

dberkholz · Post by **dberkholz** » Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:45 pm

bob doe wrote:To be honest Im curious as to why it would take a week to 'upload media'...

You're right, it doesn't. The timeline only shows completed tasks, not what happens in the middle -- such as taking the portage tree snapshot from Jun 18 and building and testing all the media. Uploading is how you say all that's done, it's not the task in itself.

cyblord · Post by **cyblord** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:14 pm

It's the 27th today, let's see if the release progress gets updated.

lightvhawk0 · Post by **lightvhawk0** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:36 pm

Yay I just switched profiles and I'd have to say it was relatively painless.

Thanks for a smooth transition.

durty_nacho · Post by **durty_nacho** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 3:26 pm

Oh man I can't wait till Monday!

NathanZachary · Post by **NathanZachary** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 5:18 pm

We'll hope for a nice new 2008.0 release on Monday.

I would surely love to see it happen.

cyblord · Post by **cyblord** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:43 pm

Hmm... release schedule still hasn't been updated.

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:54 pm

cyblord wrote:Hmm... release schedule still hasn't been updated.

Yeah, does anyone know what's going on? I'm really hoping there aren't any more delays for the 2008.0 release...it's already been pushed back a ton.

NathanZachary · Post by **NathanZachary** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 9:44 pm

cyblord wrote:Hmm... release schedule still hasn't been updated.

This has been my concern since the beginning stages of the 2008.0 release. I don't really care if there are unforeseen problems that push back the release; those things happen. I just think it would be helpful to have the releng roadmap page updated more often and in a timely manner. Then again, it could easily be said that I don't contribute enough to the community for my opinion to matter.

**Edited because I apparently had a rough typo day**

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 9:53 pm

kalos wrote:
cyblord wrote:Hmm... release schedule still hasn't been updated.
This has been my concern since the begging stages of the 2008.0 release. I don't really care if there are unforeseen problems that push back the release; those things happen. I just think it would be helpful to have the releng roadmap page updated more often and in a timely manner. Then again, it could easily be said that I don't contribute enough to the community for my opinion to matter.

It's not about anyone's opinion mattering - if things like the roadmap aren't updated regularly, the distro as a whole loses credibility. Disregarding someone's opinion because they don't contribute enough is just a cop-out. The people who chose to lead the releng and other groups are responsible for up-to-date information about releases. As kalos said, it's OK if unforeseen circumstances delay the release - but that's not an excuse for not communicating those delays to the community.

As for contributing oneself to help prevent such occurrences, from what I've read, it takes a lot of time spent demonstrating participation in the community to gain any meaningful position in Gentoo development (such as in releng). I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would like to contribute, but find this process far too onerous and counterproductive.

I know Python, and I'd love to help out with Portage once I learn more about Gentoo. It would be great for the Gentoo leaders to show that these obstacles to becoming a developer are not so high or so unnecessary.

yngwin · Post by **yngwin** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 10:51 pm

srunni wrote:As kalos said, it's OK if unforeseen circumstances delay the release - but that's not an excuse for not communicating those delays to the community.

++

I couldn't agree more. Once this release is out of the door, I plan to raise the issue that we need to streamline the release process. In my opinion we really should get back to regular releases (like once every 3 months, as we've done in the past).

cwr · Post by **cwr** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 8:45 am

There's no way that Gentoo can move to a three-month release cycle when it
struggles desperately to maintain a twelve-month cycle. The only realistic
improvement is for releng to keep users informed of the progress of the current
release cycle, and even that will be difficult.

Will

Benni123 · Post by **Benni123** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 12:10 pm

Maybe what causes the delay is the installer?
Because: What updates are necessary in a live-cd? Once you have a framework for such a CD, the only point is to ship newer software (like new versions of gcc, kernels etc.). Therefore, one might imagine, that it would be no problem to have a fast release circle.

Unless you have a buggy installer, which must be bug-fixed all the time, and rewritten in parts to reflect updates to the system configuration....

Maybe it would be enough to drop this installer away?

And another note:
The delay seems to appear everytime before this step:

All release media is uploaded to the release staging server (poseidon) by this date to be prepared for release.

The first delay in March/April, was also at this step when it came to uploading the media for the Beta. We were informed, that a developer had family issues. And after one single day, the timeline was updated and the Beta got released.
Now the release process hangs on the similar step of "uploading the media".
Are there "family issues" again?

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 1:43 pm

yngwin wrote:
srunni wrote:As kalos said, it's OK if unforeseen circumstances delay the release - but that's not an excuse for not communicating those delays to the community.
++

I couldn't agree more. Once this release is out of the door, I plan to raise the issue that we need to streamline the release process. In my opinion we really should get back to regular releases (like once every 3 months, as we've done in the past).

yngwin FTW!

See if you can get them to drop the installer fiasco while you're at it and bring back GRP

Because it seems to me that all it's doing is distracting the release team with countless bugs and problems. Perhaps it could be worked on inbetween releases to bring it up to a usable state, but it's still nowhere there yet. It should never have been included on a stable release image in the first place, nevermind replacing GRP which did work hassle free.

dberkholz · Post by **dberkholz** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 6:01 pm

AidanJT wrote:See if you can get them to drop the installer fiasco while you're at it and bring back GRP

Because it seems to me that all it's doing is distracting the release team with countless bugs and problems. Perhaps it could be worked on inbetween releases to bring it up to a usable state, but it's still nowhere there yet. It should never have been included on a stable release image in the first place, nevermind replacing GRP which did work hassle free.

The installer is worked on by the installer team, which only has one person overlapping with the releng team. As far as I know, that person isn't doing anything to hold up the release.

srunni · Post by **srunni** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 6:27 pm

dberkholz wrote:The installer is worked on by the installer team, which only has one person overlapping with the releng team. As far as I know, that person isn't doing anything to hold up the release.

It seems to me that Gentoo project's bus factor is far too high. If the incapacitation of any one of many developers is enough to derail the whole project, then there are problems of a far greater magnitude than any of the technical aspects that are being bickered about so much (such as Portage vs Paludis vs pkgcore). Just because this Andrew Gaffney cannot hold up his end of the bargain doesn't mean it should just collapse. There should be multiple developers working on each goal.

It looks like I will have to find another distro to use. It's rather sad, since the technical merits of Gentoo are unmatched, but something as simple as reliability among the developers has prevented progress. Since I already know APT quite well, I think I will go with Debian for now, but I'll check back regularly to see if the situation with Gentoo leadership has changed.

aidanjt · Post by **aidanjt** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 6:59 pm

dberkholz wrote:The installer is worked on by the installer team, which only has one person overlapping with the releng team. As far as I know, that person isn't doing anything to hold up the release.

The installer has been nothing but a nuisance since day one, with it being an integral part of the 'installer' image releases that have to coincide with the release schedule, either delays need to be made to resolve it's bugs, or throwing it out as is would explain why it's so completely useless. Either way, it's not a good situation, and my original statement that it should have been left out of stable releases until it's actually fit for it's purpose, still stands.

cyblord · Post by **cyblord** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:40 pm

AidanJT wrote:
dberkholz wrote:The installer is worked on by the installer team, which only has one person overlapping with the releng team. As far as I know, that person isn't doing anything to hold up the release.
The installer has been nothing but a nuisance since day one, with it being an integral part of the 'installer' image releases that have to coincide with the release schedule, either delays need to be made to resolve it's bugs, or throwing it out as is would explain why it's so completely useless. Either way, it's not a good situation, and my original statement that it should have been left out of stable releases until it's actually fit for it's purpose, still stands.

++

d2_racing · Post by **d2_racing** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:06 pm

In fact, I'm sure that just with the minimal Gentoo CD, the 2008.0 profile could by out there since june 1.