[CentOS-devel] Updates between minor releases

[Marcus Moeller]

Hi all.

In general the release of CentOS 6 has been appreciated a lot in the
German-speaking countries. But a lot of ppl complained about how updates
are handled in transition phases between minor releases (e.g. 5.5 to 5.6).

>From what I can see on the announce list there has be a lack of updates
for about two month:

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-February/thread.html
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-March/thread.html

where some critical updates where pending.

I remember that we once agreed that if a critical update has been
released during transition phase, it should be backported.

Maybe we have to completely re-think the process. I guess the main aim
is to keep minor releases (the ones that are shipped on the media) in
sync with upstream. They should not contain newer packages, then
upstream to keep compatibility on release date.

But on the other hand, already installed systems need to be patched.

I am not completely sure how this scenario is handled atm but if not
already done this way, i would suggest that the majorversion directory
(e.g. 5/) should be fed with these missing updates so that they become
nearly next-minor. Similar to what is planned for 6.0 ->  6.1

Besides that the minor release trees (e.g. 5.7/) should only contain
packages that are part of the release, no post release updates, on
release date.

Greets
Marcus