[oi-dev] [OpenIndiana-discuss] Studio future in OI (Re: )

[Nikola M.]

On 10/12/13 10:36 AM, Dave Koelmeyer wrote:
> On 12/10/13 07:06 PM, Nikola M. wrote:
>> I also don't want *anytime* to be left with an update of Hipster that 
>> just break all everyday apps. (Plus all old apps binary compatibility)
>> It must be considered with the rest of the apps and people that are 
>> using it.
>> People are willing to use Hipster in everyday installations if it 
>> does not break horribly without announcement.
>
> I would have thought it was pretty clear at this stage (also given 
> previous recent posts) that Hipster is bleeding edge, 
> developer-focused and breakages are to be expected. Given this I'm not 
> sure why you or anyone else would be using it in "everyday 
> installations" instead of the a8 release.
>
Like Sriram suggested, point of having Hipster is that someone will use 
it, install and update from it
and test changes in that way while reporting bugs, so they could be 
fixed prior putting updates to /dev release.

If it can Not do everyday tasks (working latest Adobe flash, opening 
PDFs, using many other everyday applications (Firefox Thunderbird, 
OpenOffice and so on)
no one would consider installing it, using it for a subset of desktop 
tasks, that are gradually widen to server use with 
Opensolaris/Openindiana management techniques.

It is whole point of the Openindiana and Hipster effort to have 
something usable and to have users using it and reporting further real 
problems toward component and packages changes.
If we don't have basic (desktop) functionality working undisturbed and 
not broken for those everyday tasks, we would have unusable platform 
from every user supposed to use it regularly,
that expand knowledge about the platform and report more important bugs 
(and feature requests!) then UI and everyday applications.

We are mostly not people that are payed to do testing (and use Hipster), 
to make it main job.
We are mostly casual users that are willing sacrifice benefits of other 
open or closed source platforms in favor of being included in the 
project that has clear future and growing rate
And things like breaking Gnome desktop (clearly untested before release) 
and borking adobe flash support in 151a8 and Hipster, shows alarming 
lack of understanding of this user-desktop user tester , user-server 
administrator , developer-contributor and developer-distribution 
maintainer relationship.

Where would be next OI /dev release be tested, but in Hipster?

If user-tester have all features he used to, gradually broken and 
non-working and user-contributor make changes that affect wide range of 
packages, _binaries and sub-projects, user-distribution maintainer needs 
to stop that without planning, proposing and selecting people for 
projects that deal with side-affect of user-developer changes and that 
actually care for user-server admin, as the final consumer of the product.

This is my intention to discuss obvious problems that Openindiana have 
with release management
and quality control and I see no justification to ignore user requests 
for clear open testing process that is suppose to produce quality and 
improvements, not drawbacks as a result.

Every user should have clear information how project actually functions 
and who does what,
without need to read tons of IRC discussions, mailing lists and be there 
for 5 years,
without having a f* idea what are steering paths and models of choosing 
future of a distro.