On Thu, 04 Sep 2025 at 11:19:49 +0200, Hefee wrote:
If upstream is that aggressive with old version, than yes the normal Debian stable is not working for signal- desktop. But it can be used in unstable/testing and -backports. If forky release is taking place you can use a release-critical bug to make sure that it does not end up in stable on purpose, if no netter solution is found until than.
Packages that are not expected to be suitable for the next stable release should not be in testing, and therefore cannot be in backports with backports' current policy.
A package that is too fast-moving for stable releases can be in unstable or experimental, and the fasttrack repository <https://fasttrack.debian.net/> is available for backports-like rebuilds of that package to be used on a stable system.
Note that if a package exists in unstable, it will usually get copied into Ubuntu 'universe' for their LTS releases, even if it is unsuitable for that purpose. experimental might be a better choice for that reason.
fasttrack is an experiment, and is not currently well-integrated with the main Debian archive: it doesn't have buildds (maintainers have to do binary uploads) and operates its own dak instance. But I think a lot of leaf packages like independent third-party applications (and especially games) might be better-served by being in fasttrack than by being part of our stable releases: for that category of package, our users want a version that will run correctly on a stable *OS*, but not necessarily a version of the leaf package that is, itself, long-term stable.
Using Flatpak (or maybe Snap) for leaf applications would be another option: that way, they're sandboxed, which might be more valuable than what they gain from being in Debian.
A lot of discussion will get easier if signal-desktop is packaged
I agree, but if someone does, I think it should be in experimental first.
smcv