Policy for bo-unstable uploads
Hi folks!
According to recent discussions here on debian-devel, some people still
fear that the "bo-unstable" directory (to be created in the next few days)
will produce more work for the maintainers and we should concentrate on
"hamm". However, the opposite is true: A lot of maintainers (and users)
spend a lot of time to recompile "hamm" packages for their own "bo"
systems. Since we currently have no official place to upload these
packages, the same piece of work is done over and over again by different
people. By providing an upload place for these packages, the work will
actually reduce for some of us.
We already have a executive decision to create the bo-unstable
directory and I don't see a reason for delaying this any
longer. (Otherwise, it will be too late since "hamm" might be released
some day.)
Guy, please create the directory on master now.
I think we should discuss the policy for the new directory here. I suggest
to place this into some "README" file in the bo-unstable directory once it
has been approved. Here is a proposal for such a policy. Any comments
are welcome!
Thanks,
Chris
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The bo-unstable directory stores packages which are taken from the
current unstable distribution (aka hamm) but compiled to work with
Debian 1.3.1 (aka bo). This has become necessary since "hamm" uses a
different version of the "libc" so partial upgrades from "bo" to
"unstable" are nearly impossible.
The packages in bo-unstable are provided as extra service for our
users who need newer versions of some packages or who want to help
testing newer packages (but don't have a possibility to run a full
"unstable" system).
*********************************************************
* WARNING! The packages in bo-unstable are even more *
* unstable than the packages in "unstable", since *
* they are not used by that many people. *
* *
* The Debian developers do not make any attempts *
* to test these packages! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! *
*********************************************************
Every Debian maintainer is free to upload bo-unstable versions of his
packages, but noone is forced to do so. Thus, maintainers are free to
ignore and close any bug reports against bo-unstable versions of their
packages without further comments.
Debian maintainers may also release bo-unstable versions of someone
else's packages after following the usual procedure for interim
releases, that is, contacting the maintainer or the debian-devel
mailing list about the intention to release a bo-unstable package and
waiting for an acknowledgement.
It is important that bo-unstable packages use version numbers that are
different from "bo" and "hamm" packages. In addition, upgrades from
"bo" to "bo-unstable" and "bo-unstable" to "hamm" should be possible
at any time. Therefore, the following versioning scheme has to be used
for bo-unstable packages:
bo-unstable hamm
last bo package 1.2-4 ---
old package 1.2-4bo5 1.2-5
new package 1.2-4bo6 1.2-6
newer package 1.2-4bo7 1.2-7
non-maintainer 1.2-4bo7.1 1.2-7.1
new package 1.3-0bo1 1.3-1
newer package 1.3-0bo2 1.3-2
non-maintainer 1.3-0bo2.1 1.3-2.1
That is, bo-unstable version numbers use the revision of the latest
package in "bo", concatenated with "bo" and the Debian revision of the
corresponding package in "hamm". In case of a new upstream version in
"hamm", the version number is taken from the new "hamm" version with
Debian revision 0, concatenated with "bo" and the Debian revision of
the "hamm" package. (I hope everyone can follow :-)
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-- Christian Schwarz
Do you know schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
Debian GNU/Linux? schwarz@debian.org, schwarz@mathematik.tu-muenchen.de
Visit PGP-fp: 8F 61 EB 6D CF 23 CA D7 34 05 14 5C C8 DC 22 BA
http://www.debian.org http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/
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