[Nix-dev] Policy for updates in 14.04

[Peter Simons]

Hi Lluís,

 > Almost any software update will contain a bunch of bugfixes and only
 > sometimes new features.

can you point me to an empirical study that supports this thesis? 

 > And for lots of nixpkgs software, having the update in master,
 > doesn't guarantee that it is much tested once it becomes stable.

I'm not sure whether I understand your point correctly. How does this
relate to the policy for the stable release branches? Can you maybe
re-phrase this argument?

 > I'd prefer to have a less strict rule about updating the stable
 > branch, and act based on problems arisen. 

Well, this is exactly the kind of policy I *don't* want on the stable
branch. In my humble opinion, it should be extremely safe to run
"nixos-rebuild --upgrade switch" on a stable branch at any point in
time. I don't want patches in there that may break my system. If I'm
okay with running into bugs that may be fixed later, then I'll use
'master'.

 > Depending on the strictness, few are going to use the stable branch.
 > For me, I choose more the stable branch for much less rebuilds. No
 > mesa updates, no X updates, no qt updates, no gtk udpates, etc...

Do we have any data that suggests how popular the 14.04 branch is
compared to master? Maybe the Hydra log files can shed some light on
that question?

Best regards,
Peter