Why does Wesnoth stay in experimental?

[Andreas Tille]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:

> Because wesnoth follows the (ancient) kernel appoach of having even
> minor versions for their stable releases and odd versions for their
> devleopment releases.

Sure, I'm able to read. ;-)

> Development releases are often enough incompatible
> with their former version - like I started the campaign The South Guard
> with 1.5.6 or such and now am able to run over walls with some of my
> units because changed statistics to them.

wesnoth.org says:

    Wesnoth 1.5.14: Third release candidate for 1.6

> This is *nothing* that we want
> to push anywhere near a stable release.

Huh what????
Are we *really* *near* a *stable* release?  Please check your time
travel device - it seems to be terribly broken! ;-))
Or are you talking about Wesnoth stable release.  I intended to
say Debian *unstable* has the name for a reason: You should expect
some software which is not perfect there, right?

>> I understood it once Lenny was not released but now it is definitely
>> time for unstable
>
> Not for a 1.5 version.

Well, it's definitely your decision - but there are several prereleases of
much more important software than a game that at best might break your
savegames but not your computer.  I followed every version since 1.5.6
and *never* broke anything - savegames were abel to upgrade nicely only
some inofficial (not packaged) campaigns were not able to catch up.
So what?

>> from a Debian point of view and from a Wesnoth development status as well
>
> I doubt that you know very much about the Wesnoth development status -
> I'm quite closely involved with it and have the blessing of the team in
> mostly every form.

If the development team is in doubt this is not really reflected on their
website.

>> because we are even in the prerelease phase which perfectly fits things in
>> Debian which is called *unstable*.
>
> Yes, but still uploads to unstable should be in a state that can get
> considered to be part of a release at some point. The development branch
> of wesnoth isn't.

Sorry, we do not even have a release plan.  Do you expect Wesnoth to
need > 12 month from third RC candidate until release?

>> People who are running unstable and might whine about breaking their
>> savegames should be aware of this or just pin their older versions.
>
> That's a quite ignorant statement - with the same reasoning we could
> close all bugreports filed against unstable packages because it's
> unstable.

Well, I learned you to know as a respectable person and I wonder what
makes you drawing this kind of conclusions.  It's unreasonable enough
that I fail to find a reasonable answer.  Just think about what you
wrote.

>> The reason why I'm writing is that you prevent me from continued tests
>> because I always have to download the source and build myself since
>> wesnoth-core is not autobuilded for my arch (i386)
>
> Erm, beg your pardon? I can't follow that, _at all_. i386 _is_
> autobuilt and in the pool. Can you pretty please check the pool before
> bringing up false reasonings?

Well, I had experimental in my sources.list and either i386 was lagging
two or three days behind or not copied to the mirror I used.  At least
my installation was broken for a couple of days until I builded from source
because of missing wesnoth-core package.  The day before yesterday I
list my nerves and excluded experimental from my sources.list and that
way you just loose a tester.  And no, I'm not interested in digging
the archive why i386 was lagging behind in this concern.  Just assume
you are right and I'm wrong in this very issue - but your reasoning
about RC candidates of games in experimental is quite weak.

> Thanks for thinking along. Sorry if this respond sounds a bit harsh -

I can perfectly bear harsh words.  I have problems with unreasonable
arguing.

> and in some few hours you might even be pleased because 1.6 gets
> finalized today.

So what was you talking about above?  It confuses me even more.

> Oh, and on a different level: Wow, I was extremely impressed by your
> quick fix of the bugreport I opened to one of your packages this
> morning, I guess I must have hit perfect timing.

Well, I do my best for those new packages before a translator might
catch up an outdated version.  I'm not that quick with arb because
it is in non-free and translators will not waste their time.  I
just try to be fair. ;-)

> Rhonda [who's going to check a last patch for the German language
>   wesnoth manual ...]

So even if I do not understand your release policy - thanks for
your work on this nice game

       Andreas.
-- 
http://fam-tille.de