On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 07:54:03AM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > On Wed, 26 May 2010 23:44:52 +0200 > Iustin Pop <iusty@k1024.org> wrote: > > > There is nothing wrong with a source package that glides through > > > several stable releases without needing a rebuild, especially if it > > > only builds an Arch:all binary package. As long as it is bug free, > > > an ancient standards version alone is not sufficient reason to > > > change anything in the package or make any upload just for the sake > > > of making an upload. > > > > But here I disagree. A couple of stable releases is, let's say, 4 > > years? In the last four years, there have been significant changes > > (advancements?) in the state of Debian packaging. As such, most, if > > not all, nontrivial packages would be improved if they're brought up > > to date. > > I can think of a few perl modules that won't need another upload until > Perl6 is not only released but sufficiently stable that Perl5 is to be > removed. That doesn't look like it will happen within a couple of > stable releases, if at all. (It will take us longer to transition > from Perl5 than it did for libgtk1.2 and that took more than two > stable releases.) Other packages affected could be data packages etc. Data packages are a good point, to which I reply: how will they take advantages of new compression formats? > After Squeeze is released, I'll have half a dozen or more packages that > will be the same version in oldstable through to unstable and none of > those currently have any bugs or lintian warnings other than an > old/ancient standards version or similarly minor issues. None of those > would give any benefits *to users* by being "updated" with respect to > the packaging. To users? Probably not. But to fellow developers? Do those packages already have Vcs-* fields so that I can retrieve them easily with debcheckout? Do the patches already come in DEP-3 format, so that tracking where they originate is easy for automated tools? I agree that we don't *have* to update the packages. All I'm saying, to me it seems that the world of packaging standards is not sitting, and not doing an update once per release seems a bit (just a bit) strange to me. But I understand your point, and I'm not saying it is a wrong point. Just trying to express why I believe doing a rebuild per release helps more than hurts. regards, iustin
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