Some, not all. If packages were done to handle old versions while working with the current, this would be a different story. But this can be very difficult... I have some specs that can rebuild on older distribs and some of them are *very* convoluted. Take my qmail packages for example... before
some of the pain could be eased if we had an updated rpm package for older versions (supported older versions, i mean, not 7.2) that levels the packaging macros to 9.2
I don't believe there is anyone enjoying having to mantain 4 different packages of the same software when one would suffice.
Probably not. But if you, as a contributor, have a cooker machine and compile on cooker, how can you possibly know if your package, despite having conditional build macros, will work with an older distrib if you don't take the time to build and test on that old platform? So you *do* need to maintain it in such a manner otherwise you're just pumping out stuff that pretends to work on old distribs and you really don't have a clue if it does or not.
Yes, i do need to test and to maintain a package in such a manner. during last development cycle i had a 9.0 mail/web-server, a 9.1 laptop and a cooker box at home, and i usually tested stuff there. But that was from the same package, not different specs with different patches for each release.
The problem for me will be when i upgrade the server to 9.2 :(
Btw, some packages in contrib are very well packaged and maintained, some are playground for new features and some just suck, maybe splitting contrib in sections based on package quality and starting to maintain updates only for the stable part of contrib could be a start. (if this has already been discussed just shoot at me and i will shut up) Would other contributors be adverse on taking the commitment of maintaining 'stable' packages for 'supported' version of mandrake (that should be 18 months or 3 releases IIRC)?
regards, L.
-- Luca Berra -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Communication Media & Services S.r.l. /"\ \ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN X AGAINST HTML MAIL / \
