[Mageia-dev] Missing packages in Mageia 1. How to backport?

[Thomas Backlund]

Wolfgang Bornath skrev 10.6.2011 14:44:
> 2011/6/10 Michael Scherer<misc at zarb.org>:
>>
>> We have used backports in the past for that, and I see no reason to
>> change that.
>>
>> If the problem is that backports were too buggy in the past, then we
>> should fix backports process, not bypassing them.
>>
>> And if we start by pushing new version in update, people will soon
>> wonder why the new version of X is in updates, while the new version of
>> Y is not, just because we didn't have X in release and Y was there.
>
> Problem I see:
> So far (in Mandriva), example:  we have used 2010.0/main/backports to
> offer new versions of software which had an older version in 2010/main
> but the newer version in 2010.1/main, or as the name says: backporting
> a newer version of a software from the current release to a previous
> release, as often used for Firefox.
>
> For Mageia it means, /backports should hold backports of software
> which has an older version in 1/core but a newer version in cauldron.
> If we put new software (aka missing packages) in /backports and the
> user activates /backports he also runs the risk that existing packages
> of his stable installation will be replaced by real backports of newer
> versions, backported from Cauldron - which he may not want to do.
>
> I wonder why we do not put these "missing packages" in /testing and
> after a while in /core or /non-free or /tainted (wherever they
> belong). These packages are software which were supposed to be in
> /core or /non-free or /tainted, they were just forgotten|came too
> late|whatever for Mageia 1 release freeze.
>

well, media/*/release tree is frozen, so _nothing_ new goes in there.

So the path would then be */updates_testing -> */updates _if_ we decide
that's the way to go...

Problem is that a "missing" package introcuced in updates also can 
introduce regressions with wrong obsoletes/provides or %pre/%post scripts.

So it has to go through the same qa as the rest of the stuff heading for 
*/updates

So question becomes, do we have enough qa/security people to make it work ?

And if we introduce "filtering" on what goes in and what does not,
then who decides ?

--
Thomas