Re: GRUB release schedule?

[Andrei Borzenkov <arvidjaar@gmail.com>]

21.08.2015 20:11, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk пишет:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2015 at 09:56:59AM -0700, Josef Bacik wrote:
>> On 07/20/2015 11:22 AM, Peter Jones wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> Is there a plan for when upcoming GNU GRUB releases will happen?
>>>
>>> As far as I can tell, the last official release on
>>> ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/ was 2.00 on 28-Jun-2012, and the last beta
>>> on http://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/grub/ for the next version was
>>> 2.02~beta2 on 24-Dec-2013 .  There are (give or take) 471 patches
>>> committed since that beta 18 months ago.
>>>
>>> In the mean time, nearly every Linux distro is shipping a package
>>> derived from the 2.02~beta2 release plus some number of patches,
>>> some from the upstream repo and some not, and it's cumbersome to rectify
>>> which ones aren't upstream vs which ones have been fixed upstream with
>>> /nearly/ the same patch, etc., with all the noise of so many patches
>>> since the release.
>>>
>>> I suspect this would be better for a lot of GRUB users if releases
>>> happened on a regular schedule, or if, relatively often (say once or
>>> twice per year), a release schedule that spans several weeks and
>>> organized some kind of alpha->beta->release progression were decided
>>> upon and followed.
>>>
>>> So, can we make a release process that happens according to some regular
>>> cadence?  What needs to be done to make regular releases happen?  Going
>>> for years with the patch volume GRUB sees without doing a release is
>>> really not good for anybody.
>>>
>>
>> I'd like to +1 this.  I think the tests are important for sure, but there's
>> no reason we can't set a release cadence and at least cut an -rc1 and spend
>> some time fixing up the test failures.  Facebook is going to be using grub2
>> in our provisioning environment, we would like to have official builds
>> rather than running from git.  Thanks,
>
> What is the tests that are needed? Surely as different distros we could
> pool some hardware together to make this work?
>
> What do GRUB maintainers think are the top tests that are needed and
> on what architectures? And do you have any ideas on how to automate it?
>>

GRUB includes comprehensive amount of regression tests. Just run "make 
check". The practical problems are

- many tests require additional tools (filesystem tests need at least 
mkfs for respective file system, LVM etc)

- each platform must be built separately; that requires either native 
system or cross tools (which itself may not be trivial). So I e.g. am 
limited to x86

- tests are not really formalized, you get PASS/FAIL but what failed is 
up to human to understand

- some tests require server part, e.g. to run anything involving HTTP 
server must be available

- some tests are pretty heavy hit; it is better now when I have new 
hardware still I cannot dream running them continuously on my notebook ...

Of course addition to regression testing is always welcome.