Hello,
I have not been able to find clear information about Debian policies for binary compatibility between point releases and security updates. In essence, I would like to know whether the binary interface of dynamic ELF libraries is guaranteed to remain unmodified across such updates.
The reason I would like this kind of binary compatibility is that it seems a particular Debian point release might be available only for a relatively short time. For example, the official Debian Docker images (
https://hub.docker.com/_/debian) are only provided for the latest point release, and a point release image may get security updates without changing the tag name. Finding older point releases from other sources is also not easy, and seems to be discouraged and not perfectly supported. See for example the notes here:
https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/If such binary compatibility is not ensured, the unavailability of older point releases makes it difficult to keep building versions of my own software against a fixed Debian version installed on a client's embedded machine.
Therefore, I would like to see an improved documentation on the Debian policy and practice regarding binary compatibility.
Jakob