Dear Yaroslav and everybody,
the addition of new suites has the disadvantage of dispersing our userbase. Here is a proposition that conserves the current flow of package migration for packages released in Stable, and that makes Testing the meeting point for all the packages. We could introduce a new priority level, ‘backports’, with the following features: This priority level would be lower than ‘extra’. Higher levels would not be allowed to depend nor build-depend on packages of priority ‘backports’. Source packages would not be allowed to contain a mixture binary packages containing ‘backports’ level and higher priorities. These packages would not be released in Stable, but would be uploaded to Unstable and migrate in Testing as usual, with the exception that they would not be affected by a freeze. They could be removed by default from Testing in case they block a transition. As the name indicates, the packages which prove their stability in Testing (and only them, as in the current backports rules) would be backported in backports.debian.org. The backports would be prepared by the maintainers themselves (this would open a way to the use of the BTS) and would be the final distribution medium for Stable users. The system I propose is intended to keep fruitful interactions between higher turnover packages and stable releases: - It would keep Unstable and Testing as a central point for our users who would like an early access to new software, therefore preserving a high number of testers for the packages of higher quality, which are aimed at Stable. (In contrary for instance to distribution outside of Debian or in the experimental suite.) - Since immediatly after the release the backports are trivial, it would motivate the interest of the maintainers of ‘Priority: backports’ packages for Stable and its release process, to ensure frequent windows of easy backporting. - By removing from testing – on a voluntary basis – a lot of packages for which there is no stable upstream release, or which are still in active development, it would reduce the load on regular operations. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100922153816.ga28...@merveille.plessy.net
