[Libosinfo] [PATCH 2/5] Add an optional 'is-continuous-snapshot' tag to OS entries

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 02:01:16PM +0000, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 05:52:54PM +0000, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> >> Applications can use this to determine if an OS is just a snapshot and
> >> not an actual released product yet. For example, gnome-continuous images
> >> for development snapshots of GNOME and nightly build ISOs of Fedora etc.
> >
> > Hmm, hang on, this is getting confusing now.
> >
> > My understanding was that the GNOME continuous images were officially
> > released products, not development pre-release snapshots.
> 
> I think it was the other way around. :)
> 
> * pre-release examples: Fedora X alpha/beta and GNOME 3.9.91/2 ISOs.
> * continuous snapshot examples: Fedora nightly ISOs and GNOME continuous images.
> 
> So yeah, they are different and now we have already code/api that
> differentiates both.

That's not the way I was imagining it though ! When I read 'continuous'
I was believing that reflected a GNU Arch/Gentoo style continuous rolling
release. The idea is that before now the 'release-date' would implicitly
tell you when an OS was "GA" ready, but that isn';t availble for rolling
releases, hence the 'is-continuous' tag would help you there. The
classification you've described though means we still have the hole
around the Arch/Gentoo rolling release model.

I think perhaps we've been looking at this wrong and what we really should
have is an enum 'status' field, rather than multiple booleans

  <status>snapshot|prerelease|released</status>

Where

 snapshot == nightly builds / automated code snapshots
 prerelease == formal alpha/beta/rc like releases
 released == final cut releases

That would handle all the scenarios we've talked about I believe.

Regards,
Daniel
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