On Wed Sep 03, 2003 at 02:29:04PM +0200, Buchan Milne wrote: [...] > Take a look at the samba spec file, and you will see some good reasons > for this. The fact that the compatability was kept with older releases > meant that we could release samba-2.2.7a packages in updates for all > supported distros, instead of Vince having to apply the patch to the > ancient then-current packages for the specific distros, without ending > up with extra packages (samba-winbind and nss_wins were introduced with > 8.2 IIRC, 8.1 and earlier didn't have acl libraries, 9.2 will be the > first with alternatives etc etc etc.). If you look at the samba FTP > mirrors, you will also notice that we provide updated samba packages for > all supported releases, built both with and without LDAP support > (compile-time choice), building for an additional 10 point releases > would be a waste of my time (=> I wouldn't do it).
Just to interject here considering I'm the one who does all the post-release support. There is no way in hell that I at all think this has any benefit whatsoever to the distro (to put it bluntly). It's nice and cosmetic and looks cute (good for sales I guess), but is functionally useless. And the extra work involved as has been discussed already would make not only folks who support older distribs in their packages (like samba), but everything a PITA. If 9.2 and 9.2.1 have a different version of, say, openldap, then do I patch both versions and release one for each, or use the same release for both? If the former, too much work... if the latter, what's the point? They're the same packages anyways. In other words, I *really* dislike this idea. > Also, it really is only worthwhile bumping a release number if there are > new features (this is what OSX does AFAIK, they don't have a new release > just for security updates, no-one would pay for it - although maybe Mac > users are content to pay for bugfixes ;-)). No, those releases are free, like ours. They're usually bugfixes and/or feature enhancements... security updates come out dated (ie. security-2003-09-02 or similar) as opposed to a package name. So someone who buys 10.2 doesn't have to pay for 10.2.1. 10.2.2, etc. It's the base they pay for: 10.1, 10.2, forthcoming 10.3, etc. Minor point releases are freebies. For OS X, this makes sense. The system isn't segmented into "packages" like rpms and debs. You have a .pkg which can encompass an entire subset of apps, like a bsd.pkg might contain all the core unix underpinnings, a devel.pkg might include library headers, compilers, etc. But they don't have gcc.pkg, db4.pkg, etc. It totally makes sense to me in an OS X context, but makes no sense whatsoever in a Linux rpm-based context. -- MandrakeSoft Security; http://www.mandrakesecure.net/ Online Security Resource Book; http://linsec.ca/ "lynx -source http://linsec.ca/vdanen.asc | gpg --import" {FE6F2AFD : 88D8 0D23 8D4B 3407 5BD7 66F9 2043 D0E5 FE6F 2AFD}
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