Steve Grubb wrote:
OK, here is what upstream said:
Thanks for the persistence and followup. :)
>> 1) Is this (kdepim-enterprise-svn20070926.tar.bz2) an
officially
>> supported release?
>
>No, it says "svn" which means it was a development snapshot.
>We do have some snapshots which we consider good for testing
>which which some people use in production (as testing) and packagers
>might want to pick up for the "test" builds, check
>http://apt.intevation.de/dists/etch/unstable/source/
That's news to me. When I asked, I was told there was no "release" and to
pull from subversion. Glad to hear otherwise.
Question: are we using this as our source? Should we sync up with
their
recommendations?
Makes sense.
>> 2) How much testing goes into a tarball like this before a
release?
>
>We did not release this tarball, it seems to have been a snapshot
>quality control depends on the one who created it.
>
>The ones that you can find in the mentioned "unstable" apt directory above
>have seen internal testing. This consists of testing towards the new
>feature and a basic test that covers some core functionality.
Make sense +2. I'm curious exactly "internal testing" exactly means, but
either way, it's better than a random snapshot with no "internal testing".
>> 3) Did you make any kind of announcement that this was ready
to be used
>> by end users?
>
>No.
Sorry if you've already heard this before, but it's worth repeating: I was
told at akademy of kdepim-enterprise's existence, by several of it's
developers, and urged to strongly consider using this (in fedora).
Observation: Since they are not announcing anything about a feature
being
complete, a snapshot on a random day could catch something half patched.
fwiw, I watch the commits, make an effort to get "good" snapshots, but point
taken.
>> 4) Is this release stable enough for a business to run on?
>
>I cannot say, it depends who created the snapshot
>and what promisses were made for it. Probably not.
So, if you use Fedora's kmail, the upstream *developers* say it not stable
enough to use for production. By taking snaps on random days, we are on
our own. I rest my case....
I think we can all agree that random snapshots are bad, and it's nice to be
made aware of uptream's semi-official, internally tested, tarball
snapshots.
Would switching to their snapshots instead of our own random ones, satisfy
most/all of your concerns?
-- Rex