[Mageia-dev] Backports policy clarification (and discussion)

[blind Pete]

andre999 wrote:

> blind Pete a écrit :
>> Samuel Verschelde wrote:
>>
>>    
>>> Le vendredi 8 juin 2012 20:20:54, David W. Hodgins a écrit :
>>>      
>>>> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:22:41 -0400, Samuel Verschelde
>>>> <stormi at laposte.net>
>>>>        
>>> wrote:
>>>      
>>>>> I think you missed my point. If Mageia 1 "backports" has higher
>>>>> versions than Mageia 2 "release" (not backports), upgrade can fail
>>>>> because currently our tools do not take backports from the target
>>>>> release (mageia 2) into account when upgrading a distro.
>>>>>          
>>>> In the upgrade from Mandriva 2010.2 to Mageia 1, it was made clear,
>>>> that
>>>> upgrading from a system with 2010.2 Backports was not supported.  It
>>>> may work, but was not recommended.
>>>>
>>>> I think we should keep the same policy for the upgrade from Mageia 1 to
>>>> 2.
>>>> I.E.  Don't use backports if you are planning on later doing an
>>>> upgrade, rather then a clean install.
>>>>
>>>> That way, Mageia 1 users who want firefox 13 can get it, without us
>>>> having to replace the Mageia 2 iso images with an upgraded installer,
>>>> that will keep backports enabled for 2, if it was enabled for 1.
>>>>        
> 
> Current tools will correctly update backports much of the time.  (From
> my experience.)
> The tools just need to be reworked somewhat to ensure that backports are
> updated correctly all of the time.
> 
>>>> Regards, Dave Hodgins
>>>>        
>>> Again, this is not the policy we adopted. When we defined the backports
>>> policy (together, although it seems most people are just discovering it
>>> now) we said that we didn't want to have backports that don't work,
>>> break a system, or prevent upgrade.
>>>
>>> However, I think that for DVD upgrade without internet access this is a
>>> sensible option. But the upgrader should detect the situation itself,
>>> not hope that the user will read somewhere in the release notes that
>>> it's not supported.
>>>      
>> No, just include Cauldron's backport repositories (disabled by default)
>> inside the DVD iso.  Upgrade to the release version, if possible.
>> If that is not possible, upgrade to the version in backports.
> 
> Cauldron's backport repos will always be empty.
> If you introduce a new package, or a new version of an existing package
> to Cauldron, it is not, by definition, a backport.  Even though the same
> version (not counting the revision) may be a backport for previous
> releases.

By definition you are completely correct, but I was deliberatly 
bending the definition to cover beta software.  Or at least to 
draw a distinction between an Extended Support Release package 
and a standard package.  A new name would make sense here.  

> So if we do a release update to the latest release, backports will be
> replaced by regular packages except in those cases where a newer version
> has been introduced into Cauldron.  And if we update to Cauldron, all
> backports will be replaced by regular packages -- according to our
> backport policy.
[snip]

Some packages annoyingly have two current versions.  When that 
happens it seems perfectly reasonable to just pick one, but if 
anyone is ambitious enough to try two at once, this would be a 
mechanism to handle it.  

-- 
blind Pete
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