For transparency, we only got the necessary automation put in place during late August/early September.
Before that, we were focused on sorting out and improving a bunch of other things that had piled up over time due to lack of manpower/attention/working infrastructure.
Hence, the ISO generation process is just one of the many things we've improved behind the scenes in terms of process automation, even if part of it is still a semi-manual process requiring operator input and attention.
The present topic is to sort out and agree on a policy for regular and routine delivery of testing ISOs for backers.
Here is what the Crew tier ISO release folder looks like currently:
$ ls -golthr *.iso
-rw-r--r-- 3 2.3G Jun 24 17:00 Solus-4.4-Budgie.iso
-rw-r--r-- 3 2.5G Jun 24 17:20 Solus-4.4-GNOME.iso
-rw-r--r-- 3 2.4G Jun 24 19:29 Solus-4.4-Plasma.iso
-rw-r--r-- 3 2.3G Jul 1 00:01 Solus-4.4-MATE.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.6G Jul 30 01:17 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Snapshot-2023-07-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.8G Jul 30 01:17 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Snapshot-2023-07-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.8G Jul 30 01:17 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Snapshot-2023-07-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.4G Sep 1 23:41 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-09-02.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.6G Sep 1 23:54 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-09-02.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.5G Sep 2 00:07 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-09-02.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.4G Sep 9 01:58 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-09-09.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.6G Sep 9 01:58 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-09-09.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.5G Sep 9 01:58 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-09-09.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.1G Sep 9 01:58 Solus-4.5-XFCE-Prerelease-2023-09-09.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.4G Oct 29 02:46 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-10-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.6G Oct 29 02:46 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-10-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.5G Oct 29 02:46 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-10-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.1G Oct 29 02:46 Solus-4.5-XFCE-Prerelease-2023-10-28.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.4G Nov 11 02:41 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-11-11.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.7G Nov 11 02:46 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-11-11.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.6G Nov 11 02:51 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-11-11.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.3G Nov 11 02:54 Solus-4.5-XFCE-Prerelease-2023-11-11.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.4G Nov 24 23:57 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-11-25.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.6G Nov 25 00:02 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-11-25.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.5G Nov 25 00:07 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-11-25.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.2G Nov 25 00:11 Solus-4.5-XFCE-Prerelease-2023-11-25.iso
-rw-r--r-- 2 2.5G Dec 5 21:20 Solus-4.5-Budgie-Prerelease-2023-12-05.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.7G Dec 5 21:25 Solus-4.5-GNOME-Prerelease-2023-12-05.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.6G Dec 5 21:29 Solus-4.5-Plasma-Prerelease-2023-12-05.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 2.3G Dec 5 21:33 Solus-4.5-XFCE-Prerelease-2023-12-05.iso
The dates from the beginning of September and onward will more or less match sync dates, though some ISOs weren't generated due to tooling issues related to our GH migration etc. during the months of September and October.
There have been more regular ISOs being put out starting from around the end of October, which is when we reached a point where we could start to breathe a little again in terms of backlog on various fronts.
10leej The fact that the publicly available .iso images are not regularly maintained has been a barrier of entry for many people I've tried to onboard with Solus and has even caused driver related issues when attempting to boot the install media.
I know that at one point this crusade of mine has gotten me in trouble with the moderation teams in the past so I want to be as civil as possible in this conversation, but updated point release images should NOT be a pay walled feature.
All I'm asking for is just the occasional image update for packages not a new shiny feature with each release.
Once again I will offer donate the cpu time if thats whats needed to generate the images each week.
The backer ISOs aren't a substitute for a "proper" release. A real release takes a lot of validation and testing. You can check the 4.5 task to see all of the combinations that have to be verified as working; there'll actually be more than that this time around. That's why Solus has historically been slow at releasing.
We've recently begun thinking about how we can speed the process up to reduce the time between releases. No news on that front yet.
Our goal is to find a way to give something back to our backers, and early access to ISOs is one of the few things we've been able to come up with, because we already deliver a reasonably solid rolling release to everyone -- backers or not.
All that said, we do appreciate your feedback. Thank you!