Re: Re: Why are these old versions in Trixie?
On Thu, Sep 04, 2025 at 07:44:55AM +0000, Stefan K wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > > 15.08.24 cupsfilter 2.0.1
> >
> > libcupsfilters2/stable 2.0.0-3+b2 amd64
> cups-filters (1.28.17-6)
> so in my debian trixie it looks older ^^
I don't know much about CUPS but the 1.x series of cups-filters is
for klegacy printer drivers and Debian does not ship the 2.x series of
these at all. Whatever is in upstream's 2.x series of cups-filters must
be in libcupsfilters2 and libppd2:
https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSNewArchitecture
As such, you are not comparing like for like.
> > I am not sure that your statements are accurate. The version numbers
> > above seem quite close to the version numbers you suggest.
> It depends on how do u measure this, for example smartmontools
> released just every two years and then with a lot of new usefull
> things and bugfixes.
For smartmontools we are talking the difference between a Debian version
of 7.4-3 and an upstream version of 7.5. The changelog of the Debian
package shows that patches from upstream were still being added by
February 2025 while upstream released 7.5 in April 2025. For sure there
will be enhancements not present in Debian's version but it won't be the
case that Debian misses everything since upstream 7.4 release of August
2023.
I also note that even in Debian sid the version of smartmontools is the
same, 7.4-3. Often, newer upstream versions miss a stable Debian release
but quickly get into sid and stable-backports, but apparently not yet.
>From this we can guess at a few different scenarios:
- Upstream's 7.5 has not yet been packaged because the Debian maintainer
considers it only minor changes and not an urgent matter so close to
the last stable release; or
- The Debian maintainer of smartmontools is overwhelmed; or
- The Debian maintainer has stopped working on this package.
You can do more research to have a better guess at what might be the
case but really what matters is whether there are features/fixes that
you require or not. Usually people do not require the very latest
features and fixes and that is the working basis of all Linux
distributions with a stable release cycle.
If there *is* something you require, the route in Debian would be to ask
the maintainer about a backports release.
> I was wondering if package-update to new versions happends
> automagicly. And if not why..
That doesn't happen in Debian because that's not how any Linux
distribution with a stable release cycle works. So it's not how Debian
works, nor is it how Ubuntu, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, etc.
work.
Linux distributions with a stable release cycle pick versions of
software to package and then they never update those packages within
the lifetime of their stable release. The only changes that get applied
are security fixes.
Debian does have "point releases", which are the x part of 13.x. That's
really the only time that fixes that aren't security fixes can get into
packages during the stable release cycle, and that is usually restricted
to important functionality fixes, not new features.
For outright new versions of upstream packages Debian only has the
-backports repository.
The reason for this is to try to ensure that the whole stable release
remains stable throughout its supported life. New versions of software
have new dependencies on other software, so if every piece of software
were constantly updated then changes would ripple out across every part
of the distribution resulting in different behaviour. Other software
changes at different rates and would not be prepared for the new
behaviour of a newer version of its dependencies. There would be mutual
incompatibilities ("dependency hell").
To make a working product out of that would require a completely
different approach, but luckily there are Linux distributions that are
designed to work that way, if that is what you want. One of the most
popular at present is Arch Linux, so maybe give that a go if having the
latest version of every piece of software is something that is vitally
important to you.
What I would caution though is that if you don't understand why what you
have doesn't work for you or why you actually need something else, then
effort spent on changing may be wasted, aside from learnoing and
curiosity being a motivation by themselves.
Thanks,
Andy
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