I am having this discussion with a colleague, who wants to test the application across various OS versions (Debian in this case). My argument (supported by experience) is that one should re-test the application only if the dependencies have had a major version change. For eg., if app A depends on libc-x.y.z, and libfoo-a.b.c, ideally no testing is required for all OS releases that have libc-x.*.* and libfoo-a.*.* -- the same major version.
The idea being - minor version bumps do not spring surprises, but major version almost always do. App A is a "large enterprise app" being discussed, and my idea is the optimize the QA cycles that the team has to put in. Is my experience sound enough to say this, or are there any exceptions to the norm? How does OpenBSD handle this situation? If I have to release an app on OpenBSD-4.6 and -4.7, as long as I ensure that all the dependencies of the app have the same major version across both releases, it should run fine on both. Thanks. -Amarendra
