[CentOS-devel] moving the CR repo into mainstream release

Sun Nov 20 21:32:27 UTC 2011
Greg Lindahl <greg at blekko.com>

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 08:38:18AM -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:

> Again ... not sure what you think CR is.
> 
> CR is basically dumping all updates as we get them built and working
> into a repo that people can install in real time, instead of waiting a
> month (oe more) for every single update to complete before we release
> anything (our current practice).  I am really failing to see how that is
> what you are talking about at all ... maybe I am lost.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Sorry that I wasn't clear. Let
me try again with an example:

Let's say that "foo" is one of the many packages updated in 6.1.

With CR, let's say that "foo" happens to be the first 6.1 package
added to 6.0-CR.

When I install "foo" from 6.0-CR, I am now running a combination of
6.0 + a single 6.1 rpm. This combination has probably never been
tested by upstream; almost all of the upstream people installed almost
all of the new 6.1 rpms together.

I'm here posting about this issue because I'm responding to this
question:

> What stability problems would you expect from updates beyond a point
> release?  The whole point of an 'enterprise' distribution is the
> effort they make to not break api's across a whole major-rev's life.
> Would an upstream system break if you selectively update packages
> beyond a point release without doing a full update?

The fact that upstream hasn't tested these rpm combinations means that
there's risk involved.

-- greg