Sure, “point” releases with Gnome are generally only bug fixes, and Canonical likes that because they just merge those changes without doing much, if any, testing.
But it’s also worth mentioning that:
Gnome is extremely pro-wayland. They’ve suggested it as default for non-nvidia hardware since 2016. Of course they’re going to rush explicit sync support out, and they’ve done a good job getting it ready in a short space of time. What, are they just supposed to wait until September/October, just for the benefit of Canonical? Fuck no.
This was literally never an agreement in the first place.
This is a bugfix, in that it fixes the flickering issues with Nvidia hardware. So even if there was an agreement, I wouldn’t consider it broken, really.
There are distros other than Ubuntu, and I imagine they want this fix ASAP.
Gnome is run by Gnome devs. Not by Canonical. If they don’t like it, fork it or go back to Unity or something. It’s not like Canonical doesn’t have the money.
I fear people will interpret this story as “ugh gnome devs being gnome devs!”, like they always do. But as usual, there’s a reason for Gnome making this choice, and in this case they’re unquestionably correct, IMO.
The feature is explicit sync, which is a brand new graphics stack API that would fix some issues with nvidia rendering under Wayland.
It’s not a big deal, canonical basically said ‘this isn’t a bug fix or security patch, it’s not getting backported into our LTS release’ - so if you want it you have to install GNOME/mutter from source, switch operating systems, or just wait a few months for the next Ubuntu release
Ubuntu previously was excepting Gnome point releases from major testing on the grounds that Gnome’s point releases are all big fixes and thus don’t require Ubuntu’s major testing process. Gnome shipped a new major feature in a point release and so Ubuntu said “oops, guess we gotta test their point releases after all”. Practically, it means Gnome point releases take longer to get into Ubuntu than they previously did (but are more tested for bugs).
A much needed feature gets released quicker than usual for the benefit of users and they complain about broken faith? They could have just delayed the release until they tested it thoroughly. Using that kind of wording makes me feel they’re just in for the drama.
Using that kind of wording makes me feel they're just in for the drama.
Who? The headline writer? I'm sure they'd probably love it if they could get a quote from Mark Shuttleworth saying "Lo, they have violated the sacred covenant of semantic versioning. Heresy! We shall drive them out of the release cycle where vultures may peck at their commit logs" but, you know, so far they didn't.
Yeah, the headline writer. The actual information (and indeed the entire article) doesn’t say anything about breaking a covenant, its just that Canonical is changing how they treat updates.
Ubuntu has an installer that largely works. I just went through trying to install Bazzite (fedora), it insisted that I needed another -890GB of space. At best, I managed to get to where it errored out at the end of another install attempt, and left a broken grub setup.
As gnome shell and ubuntu. Have nio such good faith agreement.
And thisbis just a process ubuntu has to reduce its own work load.
Who really cares. Ubuntu can include and reject any software they choose.
Ubuntu users can also add and take what ever risks they choose.
And gnomeshell can choose to change there releases and software as they choose.
This os the cost of free as in speach software. If you are need 3rd parties to make your software work. You have to accept they have the same freedoms you insist on.
Personally i prefer that and the option to use older versions if thing go wrong. Then a privrate for profit ccompany making the same choices with less freedom for me.
Seems like a bit of an overreaction. From what I can see, it’s mostly that Ubuntu don’t seem confident enough to ship this without more rigorous testing (i.e. they think it might introduce other/more severe bugs), so they want resume doing that testing before shipping it. Doesn’t really seem harmful to anyone that didn’t explicitly choose to use Ubuntu.
I don’t think, it really matters whether it fixes a bug. This is about how many code changes it makes and therefore how many new bugs, it potentially introduces.
This explicit sync thingamabob was definitely a bigger code change.
I do find it weird that Ubuntu terminates this exception, seemingly from one disagreement, but hard to say what went on behind the scenes beforehand. And as the other guy pointed out, I don’t think the impact of this decision is that big, so I’m not sure, it deserves infinite scrutiny…
GNOME Shell and Mutter had been covered by Ubuntu’s GNOME MicroReleaseException “MRE” policy that allows for new point releases to ship rather easily as stable updates to existing Ubuntu Linux releases.
But breaking the camel’s back is GNOME 46.1 shipping explicit sync support.
Due to landing a “significant new feature” into a point release, the GNOME Shell and Mutter are no longer covered by this exception.
But the intent is that the point releases are focused on just fixing bugs and not adding new features or other big changes.
Longtime Ubuntu developer Christopher James Halse Rogers announced today that GNOME Shell and Mutter are no longer covered by this exception: "It has been brought to the SRU team’s attention that mutter has landed a significant new feature in the 46.1 point release.
The GNOME MicroReleaseException policy historically exists on the basis that the GNOME release and testing process broadly matches SRU policy, so duplicating that process by performing a full SRU review on GNOME point releases would be unnecessary work.
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