[Libosinfo] [PATCH] gnome: Add info for gnome-continuous 3.12

[Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)]

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2013 at 04:14:38AM +0300, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 7:43 PM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
>> <zeeshanak at gnome.org> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
>> >> On Wed, Oct 02, 2013 at 07:03:36PM +0300, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
>> >>> On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 12:50 AM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
>> >>> <zeeshanak at gnome.org> wrote:
>> >>> > From: "Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)" <zeeshanak at gnome.org>
>> >>> >
>> >>> > gnome-continuous is continuous integration system so images produced by
>> >>> > it track the git master of all modules and now that GNOME 3.10 is out and
>> >>> > many projects have branched for 3.10 maintainance, these images are
>> >>> > already 3.12 (3.11 at the moment but thats splitting hair I guess).
>> >>> > ---
>> >>>
>> >>> So how about this patch?
>> >>
>> >> I have the same concerns about this that I do for the patch you
>> >> proposed for Fedora rawhide. Namely that OS in libosinfo have
>> >> some implied long term stability, but these are by definition
>> >> moving targets.
>> >>
>> >> I understand your desire to include them though.
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps we should address this by adding a tag to the XML element
>> >> indicating whether an OS is a formal release, or a snapshot ? That
>> >> way apps can at least distinguish the two if they have a need to
>> >> so, and we can declare that any OS database entry marked as a
>> >> "snapshot" is liable to change arbitrarily over time.
>> >
>> > Sounds good to me, as long as we agree to add 'release-date' (if
>> > known) as I'll need that to map a specific image to a specific OS
>> > entry in the db in the app.
>>
>> Oh and talking of release date, isn't a release date in future already
>> an indication that this OS entry is a snapshot? Especially if we point
>> this out clearly in the docs? If we don't add a separate tag, we'll
>> not end up with entries marked as snapshots that are released already
>> in case we forget to update them (which I'm sure we will).
>
> IMHO predicting future release dates is a fool's errand. Every project
> I know misses their predicted release dates on a non-negligible number of
> occasions. That's why I think it is better to list it as a "snapshot".
> I think it is actually a good thing that the libosinfo entry will remain
> tagged as "snapshot" release until manually updated, because this is
> also non-negligable liklihood we'll need to update URLs and other
> metadata. eg, all the fedora repo / ISO URLs change between Beta and
> GA, which will invalidate the pre-release XML.

Hm.. good points although they seem to apply more to Fedora (and
other) snapshots and less to gnome-continuous ones. The latter will
unlikely be needing update once a particular GNOME release is out.
However I don't think its a very bad idea to handle both the same way
so I'll send patch(es) to add this 'snapshot' tag and update these
'future releases' patches to use that.


-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124