Subject: bug#22629: “Stable” branch

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:18:16 +0200

Hi Konrad,

Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]> skribis:

> The minimal stable foundation would have to include the file system
> layout of profiles, to make sure that users can mix packages from both
> versions safely. It would also be highly desirable to share the store,
> whose layout would then have to be part of the foundation as well.
>
> Moreover, I suspect it would be preferable or even necessary to have
> only one daemon running - if that's true, then the daemon's
> communication protocol would have be part of the foundation as well.
>
> Without a common foundation, a stable version would have to be a
> completely autonomous fork, which should then probably adopt a different
> name as well. I don't think this is desirable, in particular for GuixSD
> which would lose most of its interest if it required multiple package
> managers.

These are all things that very rarely, if ever, changed over the last 5
years.  I expect the change rate to remain the same.  :-)

You seem to be arguing of a “stable” branch in the sense that the Guix
tools (the CLI in particular) wouldn’t change much, is that correct?

I’m asking because there are several ways to define “stable.”  Initially
I thought what you had in mind was like the “stable” branch in Debian,
meaning that packages only get security updates.  To me that’s a
different thing.

Ludo’.