[arch-dev-public] SCM branch plans [was: Killing CVS]

[Andreas Radke]

Am Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:19:01 -0500
schrieb "Aaron Griffin" <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:

> I'm a little curious about what plans you speak of. I've never heard
> of of these plans like this, and it'd be nice to share thoughts and
> ideas here.

We all like the ArchLinux rolling release way. That's our big advantage
in many ways.

But there are situations where many users including me need a system
"that just works(TM)". Think off servers, routers, semicorporate usage
in bigger setups, your mom's pc far away... 
Also many open source application projects have reached a state where
you are satisfied with the current release and don't need to stay on the
risky bleading edge.

What distribution would you choose if you still like pacman and the
way Arch works(KISS, boot process and so on)? I don't want to be
forced to switch to the Frugalware stable release. So the idea to create
and maintain a stable tree/port of ArchLinux was born. Several ideas
how to do it are possible and have been discussed with some devs from
Germany and the one from the Netherlands. We are calling the idea
"ArchRock" - the rockstable distribution based on ArchLinux. It's not a
hard task but need to be good designed to ensure its quality. 

While talking about various possible ways to build a stable product we
came to the kernel and what we call our core - the gnutools and glibc.
The are many inconsistencies in kernel development and what has been
collected around. Too often changed abis and unneeded regressions
caused by the splitted developement. So another project was born in our
mind: a product based in the current FreeBSD 7.x core - managed with
pacman. I liked what I have seen there. Pacman 3.0 got ported and was
working in most parts. It's always a great challenge to start something
new and to be part of it in the early days. Around such a BSD based
product we can also imagine a userland based on the ArchLinux packages.
Not sure if it would be a rolling release or a stable one depending on
the BSD release, also both is possible. Right now it's just for fun but
seems to be worth to grow.

Ok, now beat me that I've thrown away all the basic rules from former
ArchLinux. But hey, it's your fault - the task to define them never got
finished :D

Andy