Hi,
Am 17.05.26 um 09:10 schrieb Paul Gevers:
Hi,
On 5/17/26 07:36, Andreas Metzler wrote:
On 2026-05-16 Charlemagne Lasse <[email protected]> wrote:
Can somebody check if my understanding is correct and packages
uploaded to Debian backports should get updated when a new version
hits testing?
Good morning,
I do not think it is that simple. The main point is that bpo is not
fire-and-forget. - If you upload you will need to support it. However
that does not imply that bpo must strictly track testing. There can be
reasons to have foo v2 in stable and keep bpo at v3 although v4 is
available in testing. e.g. v4 breaks a huge number of rdeps but v4
doesn't. Or if v4 is at 4.0 and experience shows that a little bit of
extra waiting time before upgrading foo has not hurt in there past.
Imho a bpo maintainer may make judgement calls like these.
That's not my understanding of [1] this:
"""
This means, you have to keep track of the changes in unstable, update your
backport when a new version enters testing...
"""
I've always understood that backports is supposed to follow testing, not some
older version that the maintainer likes. If there are worries about the
backport, there should be worries about it migrating to testing too (and it
should have been hold in unstable longer, or should have been uploaded to
experimental). If it breaks stuff, a +reallyv3 version should be in
unstable/testing too. I assume the backport ftp-masters can confirm.
I've only ever did this on changes where the bpo user has an effect on. For
sid-only transition changes there's no need to update a backport.
(see e.g. liborcus' backport, anything newer than what is backported is for the
libparquet filter which won't be enabled in backports as there is no
apache-arrow there, and backporting that one is nozt possible without
backporting cython3 and whatever else...)
The instructions even say "Don't backport minor version changes without user visible
changes or bugfixes"
And if a new mesa, as implied, breaks stuff and needs a big transition, this
falls into the
"That said, Debian Backports Policy does not allow backports of libraries that would
break all dependent packages in stable (eg: new Qt 5.x releases), and by virtue of this,
Debian Backports are considered generally safe when used as intended on an individual
package basis."
Regards,
Rene
