[CentOS] EL 6 rollout strategies? (Scientific Linux)

[Craig White]

On May 12, 2011, at 4:47 PM, Ron Blizzard wrote:

> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Craig White <craig.white at ttiltd.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On May 12, 2011, at 2:05 AM, Ron Blizzard wrote:
>> 
>>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 1:08 AM, Mark Bradbury <mark.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Do you expect the C6.0 -> C6.1 differences to be more complex, or less
>>>>>> complex than the C5.5 -> C5.6 differences ?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> And given that C5.6 took 3 months, are there any reasons why C6.1 would
>>>>>> take no more than 1 month ?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Get over yourself Dag ... for goodness sake.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Why? seems like a valid point to me.
>>> 
>>> But at that time there should only be one point release on the table,
>>> instead of two point releases and one major release. Is everyone
>>> forgetting that 4.9, 5.6 and 6.0 were all out at the same time?
>> ----
>> I think you are confusing overlap with simultaneous.
>> 
>>  • 2011-02-16: Distribution Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.9
>>  • 2011-01-13: Distribution Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6
>>  • 2010-11-10: Distribution Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
>> 
>> 2 months elapsed from release of 6.0 before 5.6 and more than another month before 4.9
>> 
>> Hardly qualifies at the same time unless you consider 3 months to be essentially the same time.
> 
> Same "time frame," if you want to be technical. As we've seen, work
> started on CentOS 6 and was suspended while the developers worked on
> 4.9 and 5.6. So, during the same time "frame," two point releases and
> a major release all needed to be done. Sorry I didn't carefully choose
> my words or go into "lawyer speak" mode.
----
6 months? Beta for 6.1 already is out? Do you actually think carefully chosen words or the notion of interim point releases is really meaningful to people who have been waiting for 6? 
----
> 
> And, has been noted, Scientific Linux gave preference to 6.0 and, as
> of yet, still have not completed 5.6. It's not often that either
> development team gets hit with a "triple whammy" like this. Scientific
> Linux chose one path, CentOS chose another. Personally I happen to
> agree with CentOS' choice here.
----
CentOS has always been a take it or leave it proposition and thus nothing has really changed except that many businesses have become reliant upon it and I see my company and many other companies turning to Ubuntu not just because of the slow turnaround by CentOS but upstream's long window between releases. Surely anyone who is supporting Ruby on Rails (or PHP prior to the PHP 5.3 update in the 5.6 update) understands the issue.

Lastly, Johnny has made clear that this is not supposed to be an SL discussion list but curiously enough, SL is invoked by those who want to use SL to justify the alacrity of the CentOS 6.0 release. As was pointed out, though their 5.6 update was slow or apparently still not out, the updates all came out long ago so what you are actually referring to was the set of installation discs that are only really needed by people who want to install on newly supported hardware.

Craig