Fedora's FESCo Makes A Bold Move To Try To Release Fedora 22 On Time

This morning I wrote about Unless Fedora 22 Is To Be Delayed, GCC 5 Might Not Make It due to needing a mass rebuild of all the Fedora packages and the time involved on the short time-line. The Fedora FESCo committee convened today and their outcome is a bit surprising.

At today's weekly Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee, the members agreed to the following: "While Fedora prefers to always carry the latest features, FESCo has determined that the Fedora 22 schedule is not compatible with including a mass-rebuild. FESCo would prefer to hold to a time-based schedule."

In other words, it doesn't look like GCC 5 is going to make it since all the packages would need to be rebuilt under it rather than GCC 4.9 as currently used. GCC 5 would have problems being on Fedora 22 without rebuilt packages due to ABI changes. Also being rejected are other Fedora 22 feature proposals that would require rebuilding most or all of the Fedora packages, like the proposal to harden all packages with position-independent code.

This was a very controversial topic with some being very against shipping Fedora 22 without the latest and greatest compiler. Those wishing to go through the debate can see today's meeting log. There's also some comments at the end of the scheduling ticket. FESCo would love to have GCC 5, but the scheduling wouldn't work without shifting the F22 release to the less opportune summer months and if going on a six month schedule after that would slide Fedora 23 into the Thanksgiving / Christmas season that is also difficult for developers. Instead, a rhythm is trying to form for always having out the Fedora releases in May and October.

With no slip to the schedule, Fedora 22 is scheduled to be out in mid-May.