[Mageia-dev] Question about backports: calibre (bug 1659)

[Radu-Cristian FOTESCU]

Folks, 

WRT https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1659
[Bug 1659] Calibre is too old (0.7.32 vs. 0.8.4, i.e. 31 versions behind!)


Two people asserted that a newer calibre package should go into backports, not updates.

I strongly believe quite the contrary.


I'd like to bring to your attention that calibre, the e-book reader and converter, has an extremely dynamic lifecycle: it released 32 versions in 6 months! Thirty-two versions! (I don't know of any other software that does that, virus signatures not counted.)


Sure thing, some releases might bring some regressions, but each and every version fixes bugs, adds new features, adds support for newer e-reader models, etc. etc. Also, the developer of calibre quickly releases a newer build in the case of serious regressions -- most of the times within 0 to a few days.

Calibre is not like Firefox, to have security fixes that would _require_ a new release to be updated rather than ignored, however, as it's a one-person project (yet a very, very, very popular one! and quite unique in features), it has a number of bugs. Newer versions are most of the time bug-fix releases too, so it's usually a bad idea to skip upgrading it.

Therefore, I strongly believe that all calibre updates be packaged into updates, not backports, especially as there isn't any Mageia 2.0 as of yet. Once Mageia 2.0 is released, whatever newer calibre releases will be available might go into backports instead -- if at all. (Although I'd say that it should still be updated to updates for the whole supported time of 1.0.)

What do you think?

Thank you,
R-C (aka Beranger with an acute accent)