Re: How to maintain backports? (mysql4/php4.2.3 for the curious)
Fraser Campbell said:
> Hi,
>
> I am curious about the best way to make and maintain backports from
> unstable to stable. I have managed to build php 4.2.3 and mysql 4.0.12
> from unstable in woody and they seem to work (brief testing). Here is
> what I did:
> While I did get software that appears functional I am not confident that I
> won't find bugs down the road since I don't understand the impact of
> building with different libraries. Here are some of the build
> dependencies that I had to change:
bigger problems may be changes in the way the debian build system works,
e.g. quite a bit changed between 2.2 and 3.0 to the point where even though
I could compile packages from 3.0 on 2.2 I could not make .debs out of
them(some packages at least, many packages didn't take full advantage of
the updated system and built fine on potato) because they depended on debian
development stuff which didn't exist(in any version) in potato, upgrading
the
existing stuff would of wrecked havok on the system. sometimes I could
work around it by commenting out a buncha lines in the rules file(sometimes
all that wouldn't build was the documentation which would hold up the
creation of the .deb, other times it was more serious).
so it's pretty dangerous trying to do backports yourself. in the case
of mysql I already build it from source and install it to /usr/local/mysql
(though I still use 3.23.x).
other then that, when I install a package from testing or unstable from
source on stable I always put the package on hold, so apt-get upgrade
never touches it. and if the package works then I don't change it unless
there is something seriously wrong about it(perhaps a security bug that
I cannot work around).
php is quite a bit more complicated, it has soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
many dependencies.
nate
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