Re: Updates in stable releases

[Kurt Roeckx <kurt@roeckx.be>]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 08:59:31PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Kurt Roeckx:
> 
> > I want to start by giving some examples of things that got updated
> > in stable point releases that I know about:
> > - linux was 3.2.41-2 in 7.0, 3.2.51-1 in 7.3, 3.2.53-2 in
> >   proposed-updates
> > - iceweasel was 10.0.12esr-1 in 7.0, is now 17.0.10esr-1~deb7u1
> > - postgresql-9.1 was 9.1.9-1, now 9.1.11-0wheezy1
> >
> > Clearly new upstream releases are acceptable under some
> > conditions.  But it's not clear to me what those conditions are.
> 
> There's not a consistent set.  For some packages, we end up with new
> upstream versions because we have not much choice and would otherwise
> have to remove the package.  iceweasel from your list falls into this
> category, and there have been BIND and OpenJDK updates with similar
> rationale.
> 
> If upstream has long-term stable versions with really limited changes
> (your linux and postgresql-9.1 examples), we may use them instead of
> rolling our own releases, based on the assumption that the released
> version has seen some testing upstream and elsewhere, more than our
> backport of a patch in isolation would receive prior to a release in a
> Debian update.

So I have the impression that if upstream has a stable branch and
really only do bug fixes with a low chance of regressions that
this will most likely be accepted.


Kurt