Bug#27906: PROPOSED] Binary-only NMU's

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

I wrote:
> [...] there's no harm in a small amount of version skew at release time.

Several people have misunderstood this; my apologies for being
unclear.

I meant that there is no harm if the binary versions for (say) m68k
and i386 are slightly out of step.  So, there's no need to rebuild
i386 binaries just because the m68k porter did an NMU.

I did NOT mean that there is no harm if there were binary versions
without corresponding source.  That's the opposite of what I mean !

Since we cannot rebuild for all architectures simultaneously and do
not want to withdraw binaries or wait with porting,
*we MUST be able to have more than one source version in our archive*.

For me, this follows from
 (a) both our own commitment to distribute source code and the GPL
when combined with
 (b) the fact of our loosely coupled development model which is
     essential in a project as large as Debian.

As far as I'm concerned this leaves undecided only the following
question: how can we best organise this and what should the result
look like ?  So far we have seen two proposals:
  i.  Simply have them side by side, with some kind of way of making
      obsolete sources disappear eventually
  ii. Some arrangement with .nmu files

It seems to me that (ii) will be slow to design and implement.  We
must therefore implement (i) immediately.  It is therefore my view
that we should file a bug against (or reassign this one to)
ftp.debian.org to have this implemented.

Some people seem to be disagreeing with my statement about needing
more than one source version in the archive at a time.  I'll continue
to argue with them in my forthcoming messages.

Ian.