Re: Care of your packages Was: Accepted dh-ocaml 0.4.1~bpo50+1 (source all)
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 10:53:12 +0100
Gerfried Fuchs <rhonda@deb.at> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> * Andres Salomon <dilinger@queued.net> [2010-01-29 17:38:29 CET]:
> > On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:54:58 +0100
> > Jan Wagner <waja@cyconet.org> wrote:
> > > <cite="http://backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=contribute";>Before
> > > uploading please think about how useful the package is for stable
> > > users and if you want to support the package until support for the
> > > distribution you uploaded ends.</cite>
> > >
> > > This doesn't mean, you have to backport every minor change, but
> > > you should take care for new major releases and of course, fixing
> > > security bugs until the end of support for the target
> > > distribution.
> >
> > How is one meant to do this when a new major release adds twice as
> > many dependencies as the older version?
>
> Additional to the example that Jan used I want to throw in pidgin.
> Pidgin got the video support disabled in the backport because of the
> dependencies not available in lenny and would be too much to bear.
> This got noted down in the changelog for users to see.
What's the point of ensuring that the package has made its way into
testing if you're going to go ahead and modify the package compilation
in such a way?
>
> > I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to fight an uphill
> > battle like that. Security support, bugfixes, sure.. but new major
> > versions? One could argue that it should be done on an as-needed
> > basis.
>
> as-needed appears when there indeed are security issues and bug fixes
> around. What one should *not* do though is to stay quite in case of
> such issues and just pretend that it isn't there. If one has troubles
> with updating a backport for such issues please raise your voice so
> you can get helped. There's nothing worse than sitting around and
> hoping noone will notice the issues.
>
What issues, exactly? The issue of, "gee, the current version of $foo
in lenny-backports satisfies my needs perfectly, what's the point of
updating to the version in squeeze?" (which may cause random other
packages to be uninstallable, etc).
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