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

[Ron Blizzard]

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 2:44 AM, Dag Wieers <dag at wieers.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 12 May 2011, Johnny Hughes wrote:

>> The ZERO release is always going to take longer than the others.
>
> Past numbers debunks this myth:
>
>     CentOS 4.0 took 23 days
>
>     CentOS 5.0 took 28 days
>
>     CentOS 6.0 is not released after 6 months.

You left out and failed to respond to the following explanations.

>From Johnny Hughes earlier response:

~~
The ZERO release is always going to take longer than the others.

The Original CentOS 3 release did not even have a ZERO release.  We
didn't finish it until 3.1 had been out for some time and we released
3.1 as our first release.

That first release happened (for 3.1) on 3.19.2004:
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2004-March/000015.html

The Red Hat 3.0 release happened on October 23, 2003.

That is 5 months.

The 4.0 release cycle and the 5.0 release cycle was much better because
the Beta and RC releases were much closer in time and content to the
actual released ISOs and we were able to build the first release version
on our beta.

This is NOT the case with 6.0.  First off, we can not use any of the
existing infrastructure to build on because we can not build on a CentOS
4 or CentOS 5 machine because of the changing of MD5SUM in the RPMs
themselves.

Secondly, the distribution will not build on the Beta (much like the 3.x
release and UNLIKE the 4.0 and 5.0 releases).  Not only that, but
upstream used many "non released" packages to build on ... packages we
can not see or get.

Now, because of those things and because we choose to stop work on 6.0
to build out 5.6 and 4.9, the 6.0 release is late.
~~

Note, the reasons why 4.0 and 5.0 *could* be released more quickly:

"The 4.0 release cycle and the 5.0 release cycle was much better because
the Beta and RC releases were much closer in time and content to the
actual released ISOs and we were able to build the first release version
on our beta."

And why 6.0 (like 3.0) is a different "animal."

"This is NOT the case with 6.0.  First off, we can not use any of the
existing infrastructure to build on because we can not build on a CentOS
4 or CentOS 5 machine because of the changing of MD5SUM in the RPMs
themselves.

"Secondly, the distribution will not build on the Beta (much like the 3.x
release and UNLIKE the 4.0 and 5.0 releases).  Not only that, but
upstream used many "non released" packages to build on ... packages we
can not see or get."

And also the fact that two point releases also came out in the same time frame:

"Now, because of those things and because we choose to stop work on 6.0
to build out 5.6 and 4.9, the 6.0 release is late."

Why do you snip the explanations and ignore the arguments contained in
the text you snipped? Why no mention of the time it took to get 3.1
(not 3.0) out the door? Why constantly cast CentOS in the darkest
possible light?

-- 
RonB -- Using CentOS 5.6