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

[andre999]

nicolas vigier a écrit :
> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012, Samuel Verschelde wrote:
>
>    
>> Maybe we shouldn't open backports for Mageia 1, and make sure upgrade to
>> Mageia 3 can take backports from Mageia 2 into account so that backports to
>> Mageia 2 are not stopped when Mageia 3 is released. Then we'll be safe.
>>      
> I think we cannot have both :
> - backports with higher version than in next stable release
> - easy upgrade to next stable release
>    

Why not ?
We would have to ensure that the version of the backport is less than or 
equal to the version of the package (backport or not) in the next stable 
release.  We just have to follow the versioning policy of updates c.f. 
Cauldron, i.e. an update always has a version less than cauldron.  
(Which allows for adding updates without changing the version of the 
next release.)

We would also have to ensure that the requires of the backport would be 
available in the next stable release, which would be somewhat trickier, 
but doable.  (In most cases this would not be a problem.)
I think that we should fine-tune the rules so that we have both.  (Thus 
restricting how we define the requires, etc, and also restricting what 
can be backported in some cases.)
Note that there are already some (loosely defined) restrictions on what 
can be backported.

Maybe we should have a group which approves backports (including the 
spec file), based on upgradability and other criteria.  Especially in 
the beginning, when the details will be less well-defined and packagers 
less experienced with backports.  Something like what we did for 
exceptions to the version freeze for mga2.  (Maybe approval by one of 
the packager team leaders ? ;-) )
We could make that a requirement for moving from backports-testing to 
backports.

> We can only have one in this list, so I think we need to decide which
> one we want to keep.
>
> In my opinion, freezing backports of distribution N-1 when distribution
> N is released is a serious limitation and we should not do this. Instead
> I would say that easy upgrade when using new backports after release of
> distribution N+1 is not guaranteed (but should still work in many cases).
>    

Agreed about not denying backports for N-1 releases.

> Then users can decide to :
> - not use backports if they plan to do an upgrade later and avoid any
>    potential problem
> - use backports, and do a reinstall instead of an upgrade
> - use backports, do an upgrade, and know that in some case a few
>    packages may need to be manually reinstalled. But there still
>    shouldn't be important problems in most cases.
>
> We can provide a tool to list installed packages that are more recent
> than version available in repository. This list can help to know which
> packages may need to be reinstalled. But we don't know whether user
> wants to revert to release or updates repository version, or use the
> latest backports version.
>    
-- 
André