On 04/06/2012 10:10 AM, Somebody in the thread at some point said:
just some random thoughts on our release model, etc.. I've been meaning to write up for a while but haven't had time
There has been some feedback, for example on #pandaboard, that the monthly release cycle is confusing and detrimental for folks looking
Right it's desynchronized from the kernel heartbeat which is upstream release cycle.
Linaro releases other things than kernels though I guess it can be less of an issue depending on the project. But for kernel it is noticeable.
But, we do still need a place for latest-and-greatest bleeding edge for folks who want to check out what we are working on. One approach, for example for ubuntu releases, we could have a "release" and "trunk" PPA for bleeding-edge.. that way folks looking for bleeding-edge can get it, and folks looking for "it just works" are not screwed. I'm not quite sure what android equivalent would be, but I guess we could
For binary package case, for quite a while until the current, hopefully coming-to-an-end discontiguity on our tree made it moot, both Ubuntu and Android packaged our last release (or in ubuntu case, last release with working mm decode) and our tracking.
That worked out well since people could choose to stick with last release or follow latest and sometimes [not] the greatest, and be able to revert simply at package or leb flavour level if it didn't look good. If the release was getting old, they could still get access to newest features and fixes on tracking with some risk of instability when tracking crossed an upstream release.
Several things disrupt that, in our case switch to OMAP5 tree, but also things like gingerbread -> ics transition disrupted what we had from the other side, and for Ubuntu lack of mm decode on 3.2. But overall packaging previous release and tracking usually leaves something that's a workable solution.
For kernel source case though, consumers will typically not be in a position to take such a granular and relaxed approach as follow monthly source release tarballs, but insist to follow git.
-Andy