On Monday, Oct 6, 2003, at 18:58 US/Eastern, Adam McKenna wrote:
I don't see how the package being in unstable affects any part of this argument. Will the feature backport be less desirable when the kernel-source package is released in a stable revision of Debian?
The whole point of not doing feature backports to stable is to keep stable stable. You won't see a security upgrade in stable that also happens to replace the VFS layer, for example.
If I install woody on a system, I expect it to continue working essentially the same way --- minus security holes --- until I upgrade to sarge. Replacing the kernel IP stack in woody would thus be a no-no.
The argument doesn't apply if I'm tracking unstable. If I track unstable I should expect that stuff will change relatively routinely, possibly causing breakage. That is why it's called "unstable", after all.
If the IPSec patched kernels make it into sarge, that's fine. Major changes are expected between woody and sarge as they are with ANY new stable release.