Sadly, PAM 0.75 unlikely to be in woody
Hi. About a month ago I took over PAM from Ben Collins. Since then I
have fixed a few bugs and have become familiar with the package.
While I believe Debian's PAM is working OK, it is sort of out of date.
We have version 0.72 while the upstream has released version 0.75.
I don't think I'm going to have time to get PAM 0.75 packaged
correctly for woody. If this were my only project for Debian, it
would be easy for it to happen. However, I worked on Ben's legal team
for crypto, am working on an idea to simplify building module packages
for modules not contained in the kernel, and have other packages to
maintain. Thus, because PAM is currently working, updating to the new
version is not near the top of my priority list.
I realize that PAM is a base package and that bugs in it can be
significant problems. I am dedicated to fixing bugs as they come up
as a high priority and certainly will not allow other Debian projects
to get in the way of things that need to be done to PAM for the woody
release.
However, this is a heads up that we will not be updating to the new
version. If you need something out of 0.75 or believe that Debian
will be significantly hurt by releasing with an old PAM, now is your
chance to convince me of your position. Note that qualified offers of
help are more convincing than arguments, although I'll listen to both.
In terms of timing, I will probably have PAM 0.75 ready late in the
optional/extra freeze if things go well. Because I won't want to
disrupt things, I'll upload PAM 0.75 to experimental until woody
releases then assuming it is ready/working move into unstable.
--Sam
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