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Re: Using source packages to bring some programs up to latest version



On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 07:51:20AM -0500, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> No, stop.  The second step if there is not already a backport is to try
> to backport it yourself.  Maybe ask judd in IRC first, whether a backport
> is believed to be *possible*.  Sometimes the bot is wrong, but it's a
> starting point.  If judd thinks all the dependencies are satisfiable,
> then you can try the backport.

judd sounds like a useful system, but I disagree that the next step is
necessarily backports.  For example, I just recently installed sid's "flatpak"
on a stretch system, and all dependencies were satisfyable from stretch (in
fact, were already installed, from when I installed the version of flatpak in
stretch). So sometimes this is a quick solution.

If the version in sid had wanted to pull in dependencies from sid, then I would
have had to make a judgement call as to the impact of that, versus the
inconvenience of building from source.

> If a backport isn't possible, I would actually prefer to build the package
> normally from upstream source code (./configure; make; sudo make install)
> than to install a binary from testing/unstable onto stable.

Yes, I think that might actually be easier than wrangling with Debian
packaging, especially if the user is not already familiar with it.

-- 
Jonathan Dowland
Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

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