[Sugar-devel] Community XO software builds

[James Cameron]

On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 09:19:45AM -0300, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
> I think we should try make a build using CentOS. I don't know if
> have all the packages we need, but the rate of change in Fedora was
> difficult to follow when OLPC had a team dedicated and now is almost
> impossible. The true is we didn't finished to solve the problems we
> found in F20, and Fedora is working in F22.

I do not think we should switch from Fedora to CentOS, because;

1.  our installed base express interest in Fedora or Ubuntu,

2.  there are missing desktop packages, which means we are taking on
maintenance of those packages on CentOS,

3.  we would delay necessary work until the next release of CentOS, or
if the work is too large we may never upgrade.

Let me explain that last point.

There is a continuous flow of changes into Fedora.  These changes
eventually flow into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and thus into CentOS.

The most cost effective way to handle this flow was for developers to
test changes on our builds, every week.  This gaves us awareness of
the change and kept us involved to resist changes that cause damage.
We were there once.  It required a low but continuous engineering
effort.

The next most cost effective way is to do this work only when a new
release of Fedora occurs.  This results in lots of head scratching and
bug fixing, and new builds, until the bugs are mostly gone.  We are
here now.  It requires bursts of engineering effort.

The least cost effective way is to hold off doing that work for three
years until the next CentOS release.  This would be a lot more work in
a much shorter burst.

Delaying effort until a future time hasn't worked, and I don't think
it will.  Meanwhile, I'm trying as hard as I can with what I'm doing.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/