Debian Installer builds are a bit special when compared with other packages or even udebs. The way the builds are done means some special attention is needed to ensure full source compliance for the release. debian-installer images consist of: 1) files unpacked udebs from testing 2) libraries that are reduced using mklibs and are taken from the host system; i.e. taken from unstable 3) stuff taken from or generated by build dependencies. mainly to make images bootable; again taken from unstable For source compliance 1) is no problem. For 2) and 3) there needs to be a check that the version used during the build (unstable) matches what is shipped in the release. For Etch Steve Langasek created a webpage that showed that, but the script that generated it got lost with the ftp-master crash. There is at least one package that may currently violate source compliance. dosfstools was uploaded to sid with a new upstream version a few days ago. It is used to make IA64 images bootable. I am not sure whether this does create a source compliance issue or not as I don't know exactly what gets included in the image. Maybe it could be an option to use the "transition upload block" mechanism to prevent further uploads of (selected) D-I build dependencies to sid and thus prevent version skew between testing and unstable. A second related issue is that after the final D-I upload no updates for packages that have udebs or are D-I build dependencies can be accepted into testing, unless the version included in D-I is first saved in a special suite. This last was done for a few packages for Etch. For both issues please check with the release wizards for details. Cheers, FJP
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