Ubuntu 13.04 and "Rolling Development"

[zika]

In the developer's comments on the decision, it wasn't mentioned exactly how they are planning on implementing it...they said they had to work out the "details"....
One mentioned something about a "symlink"...if they used that, you would probably have to enter 2 commands (i think) in the terminal to add it...or perhaps they would add it as an optional
"software updater" sources option to check (i don't think it would be activated by default as some might just want to ride 13.04 into a final release and continue to the next version)....

I hope we will see information in this section about how it will be done before 13.04 goes "final"...

Basically, the plan is to make it so that you would not need to do an "upgrade" in development to move to each new development version....you would simply get "pointed" to the updates for the next version when they starting sending them...essentially, making development "roll" though they are not going to call it that

As time goes on and we get closer to 13.04 release, it would be appreciated if anyone who sees any articles, or gets any information on it, will hopefully post here to my thread about it (with links to any information)...

Or symlinks...

[craig10x]

Forgot to give you an LOL for that one, zika

by the way, this is the way they put it when they voted on the changes and made the final decision about the new 9 month support for 6 month releases and making it so that development could go right into each next version without the need for upgrading...i am kind of a layman with the technical stuff...what is a "meta" series and "archive mirrors" they are referring to and any guesses on how they might implement it the way they are explaining it?
does anyone want to take a "stab" at this? I am curious

Enable users to continuously track the development focus of Ubuntu
without having to explicitly upgrade

This discussion was about making it easier for some of our users to keep their machine always on the current development release.
This has nothing to do with Rolling Releases and is purely about setting up some kind of meta-series on the archive mirrors that people can use instead of having to manually upgrade from one development release to the next.
There again, all 3 present members agreed with this proposal.

[craig10x]

I guess no one had any thoughts about how they might do this...i was curious though, in case they don't have the new way of "pointing to the next version without upgrading", ready in time for the 13.04 final release, in case i would want to move from my 13.04 development to 13.10 development, i was wondering how that is done?

Anyone who had done it in the past, perhaps you can post here the simplest way to do it...and does it work smoothly? How do you know when to do the upgrade and does it work well?

[EgoGratis]

Anyone who had done it in the past, perhaps you can post here the simplest way to do it...and does it work smoothly? How do you know when to do the upgrade and does it work well?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Up...pment_releases

It's fairly easy to do this ("one command") and to be honest i personally don't see the point if interim releases are not ditched why additional efforts would be put in the development release to make them work reliable for regular users through the whole development cycle. It should brake regularly for at least 2 to 3 months because it's weird in a way to maintain development release in a way it would be appropriate for regular users and in the same time shift focus from fixing bugs from LTS and interim releases users actually do use.

I still feel Ubuntu is doing it wrong it tries to focus too much on the stuff regular users don't use. Just after the LTS release is available focus ships to interim release and just after interim release is out everything is focused on development release and this new proposals actually tries to make this more obvious.

Why? I feel this is very inefficient behaviour.

As i suggested the process should go in the other direction and to put the all available focus on "solid core" and stay there for a while for something to be built upon it and then go further.

There realy isn't any reason why Unity(Next) + Mir + you name it yourself... could not be developed ON Ubuntu 12.04 and to use development PPAs for testing and at the same time to improve this "solid core" Ubuntu 12.04 represents!

[craig10x]

Good to know that it is easy to upgrade...well, i think what it is... the reason why development updates have mostly become pretty reliable is for improvements in automated checking before the updates are sent, i don't think that it is so much to do with manual intervention on the developer's part (at least that is what i got from some Mark Shuttleworth blog i read about it)...so, it's not like their concentrating on making development reliable as opposed to the LTS and interim releases...

What i can't figure is why don't they simply have LTS and have it update software to keep it current and new kernels and other system improvements, so that you would only really need to install every 2 years at the most (or less if you wanted to continue running with the same version)....

Even in windows, software gets updated all the time without problems...so i can't see why they (ubuntu) couldn't do the same..

The main reason i was considering continuing with development is because of the "rolling style" aspect of it...and with the hope i wouldn't need to re-install as often...
with 6 month releases, there is too much temptation to re-install every 6 months to get the newest improvements...

[EgoGratis]

I spent way too much time thinking about this. I will probably manage o use whatever Ubuntu will do.

I would ditch everything but LTS releases and focus on them, slightly reduced time between them and focus on them for at least additional 6 to 12 month after the release but who knows maybe in a year's time i will be on "Ubuntu Rolling" and it will work OK.

[craig10x]

LOL...me too (spending too much time thinking about this)

Well, i think i figured...why not go ubuntu development "rolling" and maybe it will go along fine and i won't need to re-install for a long, long time...
and if things get a bit "buggy" or problematic... well, when 14.04 arrives, maybe i'd consider just going LTS to LTS from that point on....

I don't want to roll back to 12.04 because certain large bugs i had on 12.04 and 12.10 on my system were gone as of 13.04 and i like the various improvements in 13.04 that i have noticed...
I'm too spoiled now

[EgoGratis]

good to know that it is easy to upgrade...well, i think what it is... the reason why development updates have mostly become pretty reliable is for improvements in automated checking before the updates are sent, i don't think that it is so much to do with manual intervention on the developer's part (at least that is what i got from some Mark Shuttleworth blog i read about it)...so, it's not like their concentrating on making development reliable as opposed to the LTS and interim releases...

AFAIK when something breaks somebody has to fix it (immediately) but i don't see the point in wasting too much resources on this task for first couple of months in dev cycle. For sure it's nice to have dev release working reliable through all of the dev cycle but it's not essential in my opinion.

what i can't figure is why don't they simply have LTS and have it update software to keep it current and new kernels and other system improvements, so that you would only really need to install every 2 years at the most (or less if you wanted to continue running with the same version)....

even in windows, software gets updated all the time...so i can't see why they couldn't do the same..

Windows OS (the core) needs upgrading every few years. About latest software yes that is something USC needs to solve in my opinion adding concepts like PPAs to it and gradually allow upstream developers to maintain their app in USC. This is not straightforward task or a task to be done over night and probably not a task for 100% of available software but small step in the right direction. It might make sense "Ubuntu Staff" does this for some of the most popular software in the beginning...

the main reason i was considering continuing with development is because of the "rolling style" aspect of it...and with the hope i wouldn't need to re-install as often...
with 6 month releases, there is too much temptation to re-install every 6 months to get the newest improvements...

This is one way of looking at it but for majority of users i think latest LTS with 5 years support time is more desirable (if only USC would offer latest app they like to use). It's solved with PPAs usually BUT there are too many Ubuntu releases and because focus shifts after some months PPAs start to loose support for latest LTS release and focus on latest one or two interim releases...

[EgoGratis]

But OK i will be open minded about this and who knows maybe Ubuntu could become rolling release or to have rolling flavour and to work out great!

[craig10x]

I hope so too...now where's that "symlink"