suppose that only blender and firefox and gimp and java is backported. any
kind of combination would have to be tested to be able to support
backports:
- testing backports blender on a system without backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and only firefox
installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and only gimp
installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and only java
installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and both firefox
and gimp installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and both firefox
and java installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and both gimp and
java installed from backports
- testing backports blender on a system with backports and firefox and
gimp and java installed from backports
This for each arch: thus 16 tests.
This amount of tests is a direct result of trying to support backports
when you can have any single backported package installed, that you want.
I think you are misunderstanding the kind of support we can offer for
backports. See Thomas's email. We will test a package installs and
works. We don't plan on supporting updates against already installed
backports, at least none that I'm aware of and if so then we maybe ought
to rethink opening backports altogether.
We obviously support updates against already installed updates. If that
happens to break a backported package then that is not our main concern.
We certainly have no plans to add an extra layer of testing to regular
updates to check for that. I've never used a distro where backports were
treated that way and we absolutely do not have the manpower in QA to
support it. I'm not sure what other way to say it. I apologise if that
narrows the options on backports policy but this is the reality of it.
That though is a separate discussion (or should be) and not related to
fixing bug 2317.
Claire
