Re: Are Debian packages updated within a release?

[George at Clug <Clug@goproject.info>]

On Saturday, 18-01-2025 at 11:47 John Hasler wrote:
> In the case of rsync Debian backported a fix.  Therefor it gets the old
> version number with a suffix to indicate that Debian patched it.  In the
> case of chromium upstream patched it and released the patched version
> with a new version number.

John,

Thanks for your reply.

So this means that a patched version from : 

https://backports.debian.org/
Backports are packages taken from the next Debian release (called "testing"), adjusted and recompiled for usage on Debian stable. 

as in:
# bookworm-backports, previously on backports.debian.org
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb-src https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware


Was copied into debian-security as in:
deb https://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

which means as log as we have debian-security in our apt sources we still get the security patched version without needed to do anything special like specifically installing a bookworm-backports package.

Please let me know if I am wrong.

I rarely use backports, but when I do, I like the "adjusted and recompiled for usage on Debian stable" part, much better that grabbing packages from other distributions and just installing them, hoping there will not be issues.  Though I had not realised that at times, a package would be moved/copied from backports into security, I would not have expected that action, but it does make sense when you explained it.

Thanks,

George.


> -- 
> John Hasler 
> john@sugarbit.com
> Elmwood, WI USA
> 
>