[mythtv-users] FAO Myth distro package maintainers.

[Brad Benson]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:40:57 +0000, David <myth at dgreaves.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking about Myth's stability.
> 
> Generally the releases are pretty good (!) :)
> 
> However, occasionally things happen (0.15.1, the nfs file close problem
> in 0.16, the ww.weather.com issue)
> ie right now I'd like to see 0.17.1 include a fix for the weather
> problem rather than wait until 0.18 (or hacking hosts/xml)
> (Well, truth be told, I'm still on 0.16 so I'd have have liked an
> nfs-close patch release...)
> 
> The problem with this is that the fix for weather is mixed in with a
> load of other CVS changes so it's hard to create a 0.17.1
> 
> I was wondering whether a leaf could be taken out of the linux kernel's
> recent 'stable' approach?
> Essentially gather a set of patches together that all the maintainers
> can use to release 'stable' upgrades?
> All distro packagers could submit/veto patches... that kind of thing.
> 
> These patches would offer no new features but would fix simple bugs. In
> general they'd have been applied to CVS.
> Maybe not all bugs - some would be too intrusive, the fix may be CVS
> only etc etc.
> 
> The objective being that an 'upgrade' to one of these point/patch
> releases would be a very safe, 5 minute job with (almost!) zero risk of
> screwing up. Any patch that doesn't meet these criteria could be vetoed.
> Users could then safely be told to upgrade to a point/patch release
> whenever a new one was released (hey, by version 0.20, maybe that could
> be (semi-)automatic a la "MS automatic updates")
> 
> I was also wondering whether this should be agreed amongst the distro
> maintainers (it'd be nice if all of them using the same subversion were
> based on at least the same source code)
> 
> Also, I'd stress that (unless they want it to be) this would not be an
> official developer supported thing - more a package maintainer applying
> a bug for his customers - essentially the same as Debian does in
> applying patches to the package and then forwarding them upstream.
> 
> Maybe it would be worth considering a myth-packagers mail list to
> promote some consistency amongst the packages?
> 
> David
> PS Although I used 0.17.1 as an example, I think that Isaac 'owns' that
> numbering format - I'd suggest a suffix -p1, -p2 etc
> But I'd like all the distros to mean the same thing.
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> 

Actually, there has been a discussion going on in the -dev list about
this for the past few days.  It has finally been determined that,
starting with the 0.18 release, a stable branch of the cvs tree will
be maintained (for only the latest release) for the express purpose of
allowing bugfixes (but no new features) to be rolled into point
releases so that users will be able to upgrade after a release without
having to use current cvs or wait for the next full release.

Thanks go out to Jarod Wilson for volunteering to maintain the stable
branch and making this possible.

Brad