On Friday, July 20, 2012 08:27:05 AM Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> That's why I'm calling it an "unannounced release". The lack of
> tentative release dates for CentOS has been only one of the reasons,
> for me at least, to use Scientific Linux instead wherever possible. It
> was a big problem with the 6.0 release, which took so very long, and
> the 6.3 release which was pleasingly swift (and for which your group
> shold be applauded!). But it was so fast it was a bit of a surprise
> 

Nico,

The release process was thoroughly tracked on the CentOS QA OpenAtrium instance:
Completion of the initial 6.3 build at http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/node/130 on 6/23; 
QA wrapped up on 7/7 as per http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/node/135 ; 
Release preannouncement was two days later on 7/9 as per http://qaweb.dev.centos.org/qa/node/136 

That's almost exactly a two week QA period, exactly as documented, and much slower than if they had just released what first compiled.  While 6.0 was quite slow, that is very much in the past, as 6.1 and 6.2 happened pretty quickly in comparison, and 6.3 was exactly on schedule.

The key announcement on the QA site was the QA wrapup on 7/7; this was the cue for any mirrors to get ready for the deluge.

The standard schedule is documented as being 'two weeks or so from upstream release' and that was confirmed with the 6.3 release.

The SL process is different (not better, and not worse, just different, in my opinion at least) as determined by the SL developers.  It works for them, and they do good work.  SL has different aims, the most different of which is to support someone choosing to stay at, say, 6.0, but still get security updates released (by upstream) as part of upstream's 6.3.  This is a more difficult goal to achieve, really, and it should neither surprise nor bother anyone that it takes longer to do it that way.

It is good to see both rebuilds doing a fine job.