On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:01:37PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:00:16PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > Bad form to follow up to myself - but the second list was debian-kernel NOT > debian-boot > > > On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 10:27:42PM +0100, phil995511 - wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > > > Don't you think it would be smart to integrate all the updates contained in > > > the Backports directory with each new minor update of our favorite OS ? For > > > example for the versions 11.3, 11.4, etc ? > > > > > > > In my (limited) view: no, this would not be a useful idea if we wanted > > to maintain some degree of stability / backwards compatibility between > > point releases. > > > > The packages in backports generally are less general they are also very > > much less tested. The net effect would be to render each point release > > (roughly every three months or so) potentially less stable than the last. (I now Andrew is aware of this, but just to make it absolutely clear:) There are cases when software in the backports suite brings incompatible changes - there is a reason some updates have to go to backports and not into the stable suite itself. Some of these updates will *break* a working system if installed automatically. This is one of the reasons for the many warnings in the backports documentation and the "don't let Apt install these packages unless specifically requested" configuration of the repository itself; another reason is, as Andrew mentioned, the lower amount of testing that these packages generally get. G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev roam@ringlet.net roam@debian.org pp@storpool.com PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint 2EE7 A7A5 17FC 124C F115 C354 651E EFB0 2527 DF13
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