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Home > Archive > Debian Developers > April 2004 > Backports into stable
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Backports into stable
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| Leonardo Dias 2004-04-02, 3:34 pm |
| I am a user of apt-get.org to download backported packages into my woody.
I'd like to suggest a default debian backports section so that desktop
users (such as me) can download backported packages into their distros.
Since there already people working on that in apt-get.org, why not
oficialize these procedures into debian? Desktop users like me would
certainly love to get newer versions of software in debian packages into
their stable distros.
People are out there working on it, there are lots of servers out there
putting these packages available to everyone. It would be great to see
it centralized in Debian.
-ld
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| Adrian Bunk 2004-04-02, 3:34 pm |
| On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 04:18:07PM -0300, Leonardo Dias wrote:
> I am a user of apt-get.org to download backported packages into my woody.
>
> I'd like to suggest a default debian backports section so that desktop
> users (such as me) can download backported packages into their distros.
>
> Since there already people working on that in apt-get.org, why not
> oficialize these procedures into debian? Desktop users like me would
> certainly love to get newer versions of software in debian packages into
> their stable distros.
>
> People are out there working on it, there are lots of servers out there
> putting these packages available to everyone. It would be great to see
> it centralized in Debian.
Backports are only an ugly workaround if you really need new packages.
Unless there's a good reason, you should never leave stable to use
backports.
If Debian would offer offer official backports for stable, this would
give users the completely wrong impression backports were in any way
comparable to the packages in stable in terms of stability or
upgradability.
> -ld
cu
Adrian
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| Henning Makholm 2004-04-02, 6:37 pm |
| Scripsit Leonardo Dias <leonardo@catho.com.br>
> I'd like to suggest a default debian backports section so that desktop
> users (such as me) can download backported packages into their distros.
This is one of those obviously good ideas that get less obvious when
examined in greater detail.
Packages that can be built on a clean 'stable' system from unchanged
'testing' source are easy, of course. (At least one can argue that it
is a bug in the source if they don't build cleanly on woody but don't
advertise it with versioned build-dependencies). The problem is where
one draws the line when you get beyond that. Some useful packages
(say, bogofilter) build-depend on things that do not exist in woody,
and which trigger a long cascade of non-woody dependencies. At some
part in the cascade there's likely to be a *versioned* dependency or
conflict that cannot be satisfied in woody. Does one, then, upgrade or
backport these? Or stick to an earlier post-woody revision without the
conflict? This decision has to be made on a global basis, because a
single apt repository cannot really handle more than one version of
each package name.
The line I draw for my own mixed woody/sarge system at home is fairly
easy to implement on a case-by-case basis, but difficult do describe
in enough detail to automate it. Basically, I don't accept
non-official updates to libc, the compiler toolchain, and a set of
mission or security critical elements of the system. But what is that,
exactly? It depends on what the "mission" is and which security
parameters I want to work within.
What's worse, I also run a woody/sarge mix on my laptop, but it's a
*different* mix, slightly less paranoid, but still retaining the
basic woody infrastructure. I doubt that it would be possible to put
together a single backport repository that would fit my needs for both
of those boxes.
By extension, it would most certainly be impossible to build a single
repository which contained all the flavors of backports anybody would
want. So one would need an explicit policy about how to break ties
between, say, "bogofilter built against woody's libdb3" and
"bogofilter built against backported libdb4.X", both of which would be
useful in particular cases. You are, of course, welcome to propose
such an explicit, implementable policy. It might even turn out to
describe excatly what everybody wants. I wish you luck with developing
it; you'll need it.
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| David B Harris 2004-04-03, 11:33 pm |
| On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 16:18:07 -0300
Leonardo Dias <leonardo@catho.com.br> wrote:
> I am a user of apt-get.org to download backported packages into my woody.
>
> I'd like to suggest a default debian backports section so that desktop
> users (such as me) can download backported packages into their distros.
>
> Since there already people working on that in apt-get.org, why not
> oficialize these procedures into debian? Desktop users like me would
> certainly love to get newer versions of software in debian packages into
> their stable distros.
http://www.backports.org
That's as centralised you're going to get - it's run by Debian
Developers and you need to be a Debian Developer to upload to it (in
other words, the same rules as the regular Debian archive).
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| Branden Robinson 2004-04-05, 11:36 am |
| On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 10:19:44PM -0500, David B Harris wrote:
> http://www.backports.org
>
> That's as centralised you're going to get - it's run by Debian
> Developers and you need to be a Debian Developer to upload to it (in
> other words, the same rules as the regular Debian archive).
Hmm, sounds like a good example for nonfree.org to follow.
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| Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo 2004-04-05, 11:36 am |
| On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 09:57:20AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> Hmm, sounds like a good example for nonfree.org to follow.
I thought exactly the same after reading it.
regards
fEnIo
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| David B Harris 2004-04-05, 7:35 pm |
| On Mon, 5 Apr 2004 09:57:20 -0500
Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 10:19:44PM -0500, David B Harris wrote:
>
> Hmm, sounds like a good example for nonfree.org to follow.
Agreed, though I hadn't considered it.
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| Michael Banck 2004-04-06, 7:41 am |
| On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 09:57:20AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 03, 2004 at 10:19:44PM -0500, David B Harris wrote:
>
> Hmm, sounds like a good example for nonfree.org to follow.
Well, something along these lines was planned for non-free.org from day 1.
I'm not sure whether you're talking about the technical implementation
(AFAIK, backports.org is slightly hackish in this regard) or the social
implementation (i.e. the same rules apply as for the regular Debian
archive).
I've repeatedly stated that for the latter nothing else would make sense
(modulo perhaps a NM-process loosely coupled to the official one).
There are quite a few archive implementations which are suitable for
this from the technical POV. Besides backports.org, there is
mentors.debian.net, ftp.gnuab.org, the one used by the Debian *BSD port
(which is packaged as 'debpool' in main for bonus, AFAIK) and of course
katie herself.
As the box designated for the non-free.org archive had a full katie
install already, we thought it would make a lot of sense to use that
one.
With the turned down GR, non-free.org does not have a box available
currently to my knowledge. I still believe non-free.org would make
(limited) sense for maintainers who would like to maintain non-free
packages, but would rather do so external to Debian (FWIW, I would like
to do the same. There is a lot of 'free for academic use' type software
in my field of endeavour, which I would not want to put on debian.org,
but I'd be happy to put it elsewhere).
If hardware and motivated people for non-free.org eventually shows up, I
believe we should not clone the whole non-free part of the archive
anymore, but rather just start from zero packages and add whatever is
wanted there by the respective maintainers, perhaps importing the bug
history of that package, if that's possible.
Michael
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| Branden Robinson 2004-04-08, 4:33 am |
| On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 11:22:43AM +0200, Michael Banck wrote:
> If hardware and motivated people for non-free.org eventually shows up, I
> believe we should not clone the whole non-free part of the archive
> anymore, but rather just start from zero packages and add whatever is
> wanted there by the respective maintainers, perhaps importing the bug
> history of that package, if that's possible.
That sounds quite reasonable.
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