Re: Why is Debian lagging so much behind Slackware?
On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 08:08:31PM +0530, harsha wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 04:43:19AM -0500, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Mark Carroll wrote:
> > > Well, to an extent. Sometimes when you report a problem with a package,
> > > the maintainer's reply is basically, "well, use the latest one from
> > > unstable or wherever, that should work, I'm not interested in fixing the
> > > old version too",
> >
> > Disinterest in old versions is part of it - but also, package
> > maintainers usually can't update the versions in stable except for
> > security problems and the like. The upload simply wouldn't be accepted.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I don't mean to sound rude. A little curious as to why.
Essentially because stable is supposed to stay stable. It's fairly
well-known that fixing a bug often introduces other bugs, and so stable
is only changed in exceptional circumstances to try to minimize the risk
of this. Uploads to stable are checked individually by the stable
release manager each time a new revision (such as 2.2r3) is made.
> If would be really great, if you point where is the whole process of
> maintaining a package is documented. Then I guess I would be able to
> tell people who would raise such questions in future.
The best resource is probably the Debian Developer's Reference at
<URL:http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/>, in this case
section 5.6. Some other development-related subjects are in the New
Maintainer's Guide at <URL:http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/> and
the Policy Manual at <URL:http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/>.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
Reply to: