Re: Proposal: user-visible list of divergences from upstream
"Eugene V. Lyubimkin" <jackyf.devel@gmail.com> writes:
> (suppose) I'm a system administrator. I have received new production
> mail server. My only choice is a stable well-maintained distribution.
> Last release for RedHat contains exim 1.5.19, and Debian version is
> 1.5.18. I know about recently found security bug in 1.5.18. What
> distribution I will choose without official acknowledge that Debian's
> source for 1.5.18 already have a backported fix for bug?
Okay, so now we're coming closer to the (your?) problem: you want
official sanctioning/listing of patches added to a package. This is
something that we (as in Debian Package Maintainer's) currently don't.
What kind of "official acknowledgements" would suit your needs? I assume
you don't want an DSA-like announcement of every patch included in a
package. Following your arguments reading changelog seems to be to much
effort for you as well. You seem to demand that maintainers spend extra
time in deciding what patches should be "officially acknowledged" in the
package so that system administrators can compare packages across
distributions?
I don't think that proposal would suit here well. A system administrator
is unlikely to download/install a debian package just to find out what
(possibly documented or undocumented) patches it contains. More likely
they will want to look at some website aggregating that information. And
here patch-tracking.debian.net comes pretty close, I think.
--
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4
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