Hi, finally, sarge is about to release. As that happens, we had some more discussions with people as volatile is going to be really live soon; volatile is also mentioned in the release notes. Some topics have been brought to our attention, and we plan to solve them all in May, so that we are ready when sarge is ready. gaim, ...: volatile-sloppy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Once again, we were asked whether we would accept updated gaim packages during sarges lifetime. Gaim (and similar applications) are punished by trying to support special protocolls like Yahoo messenger, which are broken by purpose from time to time. As the only fix to get them life again is usually to upgrade to a fairly recent version, this is not acceptable for volatile in the stricter definition; however, we believe that enough people want such a package so that it should be supported somehow. For that reason, we intend to add a second part to the archive, called "sloppy" for now (but we're still open to any change in the name). The relevant criterias for "sloppy" will be the same as for the normal volatile, just that we are not as strict regarding function enhancements. Matching to that, we plan to create a Release-file that pins that archive down in apt, so that any administrator need to decide for himself what to take. Other suggestions for the name include current and HEAD. For packages even unfitting for that category, we might send out recommendations to update that package, and identify where to get updated package, like backports.org; but of course, this can even be decided after sarge is out. announcements ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Of course, that brings us the next questions: We need a proper list for announcements, and we plan to also add an RSS-feed with the updates. Any ideas, recommendations etc are welcome. archive structure ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ well, the basic question is, what should the users add to /etc/apt/sources.list. We currently tend to something like deb http://$mirror/debian-volatile sarge/volatile main and for sloppy deb http://$mirror/debian-volatile sarge/volatile/sloppy (and for the proposed updates deb http://$mirror/debian-volatile sarge/volatile/proposed). Of course, feel free to cluebat us if you have better ideas. timeline ~~~~~~~~ We want to make all decisions till Thursday evening (UTC), and the implementations should be done at least to the stage users can use that sources-lines by Friday evening, so that we can have proper testing. example packages ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For some packages, the discussions are nearly finished on getting them into volatile-sarge soon: - clamav-data: this package is for people who want the anti-virus pattern as debian package, and not use clamav-freshclam. We tend to give Marc Haber as maintainer the possibility to update the package by himself, and this will probably happen once a day. As very large exception, that package won't create any of the usual announcements. - gaim. Well, see above. So, that's for now. We appreciate your feedback. Cheers, -- Andi Barth, Martin Zobel-Helas volatile team http://volatile.debian.net/
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