Not even influence???

Quim buddy... I find that disconcerting. : /

I've worked in commercial software development for a long time as both a developer and now a product manager, and this approach is workable, although it is a bit more work.

the product I've been product managing for the past 3 or 4 years is a little similar, in that there is a large amount of core code (similar to the platform), surrounded by a large # of smaller components that use the core code (similar to the applications).

The approach we take is to have major releases where the core code and the smaller components are both updated, and then much more frequent 'service pack' releases where some of the smaller components are updated, but we don't touch the core.

It's actually not that big a hassle to manage - we pull a 'maint' branch off after each main release, and then merge selected fixes for the smaller components from the main tree into the 'maint' branch as needed, and then create sub branches off the maint branch for each service pack.

As long as you are a bit careful about only populating the service pack branches with fixes that aren't impacted by changes in the core, the developers generally don't take long at all to move the fixes into the service pack, and the QA is pretty limited, since the core hasn't changed.

For quite a while we were doing service packs with 50-100 fixes about every 4 or 5 weeks, although we've backed off on that a bit.

If it allows you to do things like roll out fixes to issues like https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615 sooner, it'd help us users a lot! I've been hit by that one three times in the last 36 hours...

I've been using Debian and Ubuntu(which use the same system to manage packages as Maemo) for years. Unless it has been a completely new major release version, I've never had to install updates in a huge lump like we do with PR-updates on Maemo, just install the packages that have been updated.

So why can't Nokia just upload at least some of the critical bugfixes straight to the repos instead of sticking them into these huge major releases (1.2 with Qt)? I mean there are LOTS of critical bugs for which many of us have waited fixes since the release 6 months ago! It's not like this is the iPhone which needs to be flashed completely to a new version, we HAVE a working package management for exactly this sort of thing.

So please, could someone smarter than me explain why I have to wait months (1.2 frozen week 9 AFAIK) for PR1.2 to finish testing until I can finally use mfe prperly(fix should be in 1.2?), for which the fix has been marked ready for ages! Surely not all of the fixes have such dependencies making this impossible?

Hopefully there is an actual reason, getting tired waiting months for PR1.2 to come with the numerous very important bugfixes...

@Olvi.

Dont know why Nokia doesn't separate bug fixes from updates/enhancements and insists on lumping everything into big monolithic updates. But it has been their policy considering they do the same with most of the Symbian devices updates.

There was a discussion going on about it here
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35793


And a Brainstorm. Dont know if this will help though considering it has had so many votes, but seemingly no concrete results.
http://maemo.org/community/brainstor..._packages-002/

Very good question indeed. It would be a lot easier that way.

yer why dont they release bug fixes, and then have roll up updates, like windows Servce packs. that set the bar for minimum specs/requirements for software to install. its annoyin waitin months for a bug fix that was marked as done on the garage months ago!

Can't answer for Nokia but I imagine they do this so the platform is more stable and in a "know state". No one wants to see an update on their phone every couple of days like a desktop OS. It gives the impression that their is something wrong or not complete. Phones are closer to appliances and expected to just work not have constant updates.

Because some programming bugs can just go away after other bugs got fixed. Nokia saves its effort this way. Just fix more crucial bugs and other small ones may just gone.

nokia have been doing it all wrong. if they actually established their system to debian, all this pr1.2 pain would've been avoided. all they did is hold up all the crap and nobody knows how the everything is going work once its released. if nokia released their kernel like debian and ubuntu did, bugs would have been squashed so much easier since u can actually see if its buggy instead of speculating. the way nokia holding up pr 1.2 is ******ed.

I agree with the Debian/Ubuntu method, I bought this device to feel like I had a netbook in my pocket, the way nokia releases maemo updates now feels like iPhone/Symbian (have not tried to update Android), where as my ideal desktop/laptop/netbook OS would have individual packages updated as they are finished.

And @toto29820 what your saying is the oposite of reality, bugs dont go away, even if their dormant their still there, clean code = less faults + higher performance + less battery usage. And its easier to fix and find bugs when its released in a modulatory system.