On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 12:57:52AM -0600, Brian Ryans wrote: > A recent thread on -user [1], and bug #565572 [2], have piqued my > curiosity. Would the volatile archive be appropriate for fixing issues > similar to what is described at those two links? IMHO, the backports archive would be a better choice for this. And yes, it was mentioned in the -user thread, including by yourself, if I'm not mistaken :) > On the page for volatile [3], it states: > > Some packages aim at fast moving targets, such as spam filtering and > virus scanning > > This quote seems to imply that volatile is _not_ the proper place for > package updates to fix protocol-change issues. In theory, protocols > don't change often (aren't "fast moving targets" and in fact the > protocol mentioned in [1,2] has only changed three times in my entire > time using said protocol. > > Though, my reading of another part of that same paragraph seems to imply > that it is indeed the appropriate location: > > So debian-volatile will only contain changes to stable programs that > are necessary to keep them functional. Again IMHO, this only applies to programs that are made non-functional on a daily or weekly basis, for a somewhat wider definition of "functional" including "useful" :) That is, a virus scanning engine with definitons two months old on a busy mail server is still, well, "functional" in that it will process e-mail messages coming through, but it is most definitely not useful - and for some people, that would make it fail some basic functionality requirements. Okay, so it may be a question of wording; I wonder if mentioning "useful" or some similar description somewhere in that paragraph would be... useful :) G'luck, Peter -- Peter Pentchev roam@ringlet.net roam@space.bg roam@FreeBSD.org PGP key: http://people.FreeBSD.org/~roam/roam.key.asc Key fingerprint 2EE7 A7A5 17FC 124C F115 C354 651E EFB0 2527 DF13 Thit sentence is not self-referential because "thit" is not a word.
Attachment:
pgpaLOrTkoyyc.pgp
Description: PGP signature