[RFC] Stop providing binary package updates for release builds?

[Bas Mevissen]

On 2021-12-12 20:42, Jo-Philipp Wich wrote:
> Hi,
> 
(...)

Hi Jo-Philips, thanks for the detailed write-up.

As an embedded software developer, I feel much and mostly agree with 
your reasoning. However, one of the reasons I like to use OpenWRT so 
much on my production router(s) is exactly that availability of quality 
pre-build images and release branch matching up-to-date (security, bugs) 
packages.

For production use, I really love the "official" built and tested 
releases and install them to my devices, even while having my own builds 
available. Next to that, I install packages of what additional 
functionality I need. For the 20.02.1 release, it was also the way to 
get rid of a small bug, as advised in the release notes (in a matter of 
seconds):

"
The menu bar in LuCI is wrongly aligned
If this is a real problem for you update the LuCI theme: opkg upgrade 
luci-theme-bootstrap
"
(source: https://openwrt.org/releases/21.02/notes-21.02.1)

This is what, in my humble opinion, makes OpenWRT such a great piece of 
software for even not-so-technical users: you just pick the latest 
release for your router and if you need some other functionality, you 
can simply install a few packages from the web UI. And if there is a 
small security update or bugfix, it is solved in a few mouse clicks for 
everyone, independent of their technical skills.

So apart from being convenient, I feel the packages feed for release 
branches also provides easy access to stability and security to all 
users. Given all the issues found in IOT and routers with mostly 
out-of-date propriety firmware, OpenWRT in its current form is such an 
asset!

In summary, I would urge the OpenWRT devs to not too lightly drop the 
binary distribution of images and packages it has now. If, however, it 
is decided otherwise, I'm thinking of a possible solution: a docker or 
other container-like image that users can download with for example the 
host tools pre-build and an easy to use interface to update the OpenWRT 
sources, and configure and build them to their needs.

Cheers,

Bas.