[cut-team] a user's perspective

[Bruce Sass]

Hi,

I like the idea of a constantly usable Testing and taking snapshots of 
it + select packages from Unstable to achieve that sounds great, but I 
don't see the point of forking Testing and effectively lowering 
standards (by fast tracking packages from Unstable, or worse yet, 
Experimental) to get the "rolling" effect.

I think rolling should be positioned like this:

[Experimental >] Unstable > Testing > Rolling > Stable

Rolling would be fed by migrations from Testing in much the same way as 
Testing is fed from Unstable, except that migrations which would break 
stuff (e.g., transitions) would be blocked (reverse-hinting?)

A more descriptive name for Rolling would be:
Proposed-Stable or pre-Stable

Pros:
* no forking of packages
* work done on Rolling should always contribute to the next Stable
* users looking for something better than Testing and fresher than 
Stable would be satisfied ( -> more users testing packages -> less RC 
bugs in Stable)
* no incentive to upload packages not targeted for Stable to Unstable

Cons:
* not possible to have fresher software than what is in Testing
   no reason snapshots of Testing + select packages from Unstable
   can't address this issue
* there would be incentive to freeze Rolling prior to a Stable release
   To avoid freezing Rolling prior to a release a snapshot of Rolling
   could be made and worked on much like what was done in the days
   before Testing was created.

Side Effects:
* Testing would likely become little more than a designation where 
packages wait for transitions to complete
* the Release Team would need to change where they do their work and 
perhaps how it is done

Note: the Pros, Cons, and Side-effects mentioned are not intended to be 
comprehensive, I think they address the significant concerns mentioned 
in the cut-team mailing list archive


- Bruce