[Mageia-discuss] Mageia-discuss Digest, Vol 11, Issue 14

[Radu-Cristian FOTESCU]

> What is the difference please between backport and update.

Updates are normally security updates or updates that are major bugfixes without upgrading the package to a new major version that would change the user experience or that could introduce regressions. So version 1.2 wouldn't normally come as an update to 1.1, but 1.1.2 could come as an update to 1.1.1. Of course, this depends from package to package -- and Firefox 5 is rather 4.0.2, and also a security fix, so it is meant to come as an update to Firefox 4.

The backports policy is currently under heavy discussions on mageia-dev ML, consult the archives.

In Mandriva, backports were normally said to be "unsupported", in that you shouldn't complain if a backport introduces regressions.

Otherwise, a backport is currently a newer version of a package, version present in Mageia Cauldron, that has been rebuilt for Mageia 1, when possible without replacing major system libraries,

You can file a bug report with a wish for a specific backport (updated application), if you feel like. Be specific on why a newer version is required (support for newer hardware, major improvements, etc.). 


>If breakage does occur, how easy would it to revert to the previous
>software version?


Normally, this is why the backports repositories are normally disabled by default: because the standard updates (from the updates repositories) are meant to be applied, and not reversed! Normally, you should keep the system with all the updates applied -- mageiaupdate is notifying you every time it sees there are updates you have not installed yet.


>Should breakages be reported as bugs?


Yes.

However, these are my personal views, you could also wait for some member of the Mageia team to give you more pertinent answers.

R-C aka beranger