Re: Re: Beta2 ... ?

Oliver Elphick wrote:
> Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> >Tom Lane wrote:
> >> Lamar Owen <lamar(dot)owen(at)wgcr(dot)org> writes:
> >> > I am inclined to wait until a Release Candidate, if we have one this go
> >> > around, is available before releasing RPM's, but my mind can be
> >> > changed.... :-)

> >> Please do make beta RPMs available. Seems to me that there's a
> >> fair-size population of potential beta testers that we're shutting
> >> out of the process if we don't put out RPMs. Losing available beta
> >> testing work is not a good project management practice ...

> >I'd like to argue for .deb Debian packages as well, for similar reasons.
> >But I'm aware that those are harder to produce, and that Oliver Elphick
> >is almost alone on this task.

> I'll be doing it soon; but I don't want to release debs until there is
> no more chance of an initdb's being needed between betas; that bit me on
> 7.0.

Well, it bit me too -- which is one of the lesser reasons why I have
been reluctant to release RPM's before a release candidate. However, if
someone wants to beta test the packaging (which, incidentally, is made
substantially easier with 7.1) of the new release, then they should
expect the results -- for instance, Red Hat doesn't guarantee that you
will be able to upgrade from their public beta test OS releases to any
future release (more than likely you _will_ be able to, but not
necessarily). Only official releases are 'upgradeable'. I would
suggest, as I am doing myself, to release beta-grade packages for
testing _only_, with the proper disclaimers.

But, I don't see how debs are harder to produce than RPMs -- and while I
do have some help from RedHat, SuSE, and others, that help seems to be
more towards their distribution rather than towards PostgreSQL -- ie,
they go their own way for the most part. Each distribution using RPM's
has its own arcane rules -- and some of those rules make little sense
from the PostgreSQL point of view. And, I don't blame them one whit for
that -- they are, after all, employed for the purpose of making a
distribution, not a PostgreSQL package.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11