Hi folks! According to recent discussions here on debian-devel, some people still fear that the "bo-unstable" directory (to be created in the next few days) will produce more work for the maintainers and we should concentrate on "hamm". However, the opposite is true: A lot of maintainers (and users) spend a lot of time to recompile "hamm" packages for their own "bo" systems. Since we currently have no official place to upload these packages, the same piece of work is done over and over again by different people. By providing an upload place for these packages, the work will actually reduce for some of us.
We already have a executive decision to create the bo-unstable directory and I don't see a reason for delaying this any longer. (Otherwise, it will be too late since "hamm" might be released some day.) Guy, please create the directory on master now. I think we should discuss the policy for the new directory here. I suggest to place this into some "README" file in the bo-unstable directory once it has been approved. Here is a proposal for such a policy. Any comments are welcome! Thanks, Chris -----------cut-here----------- The bo-unstable directory stores packages which are taken from the current unstable distribution (aka hamm) but compiled to work with Debian 1.3.1 (aka bo). This has become necessary since "hamm" uses a different version of the "libc" so partial upgrades from "bo" to "unstable" are nearly impossible. The packages in bo-unstable are provided as extra service for our users who need newer versions of some packages or who want to help testing newer packages (but don't have a possibility to run a full "unstable" system). ********************************************************* * WARNING! The packages in bo-unstable are even more * * unstable than the packages in "unstable", since * * they are not used by that many people. * * * * The Debian developers do not make any attempts * * to test these packages! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! * ********************************************************* Every Debian maintainer is free to upload bo-unstable versions of his packages, but noone is forced to do so. Thus, maintainers are free to ignore and close any bug reports against bo-unstable versions of their packages without further comments. Debian maintainers may also release bo-unstable versions of someone else's packages after following the usual procedure for interim releases, that is, contacting the maintainer or the debian-devel mailing list about the intention to release a bo-unstable package and waiting for an acknowledgement. It is important that bo-unstable packages use version numbers that are different from "bo" and "hamm" packages. In addition, upgrades from "bo" to "bo-unstable" and "bo-unstable" to "hamm" should be possible at any time. Therefore, the following versioning scheme has to be used for bo-unstable packages: bo-unstable hamm last bo package 1.2-4 --- old package 1.2-4bo5 1.2-5 new package 1.2-4bo6 1.2-6 newer package 1.2-4bo7 1.2-7 non-maintainer 1.2-4bo7.1 1.2-7.1 new package 1.3-0bo1 1.3-1 newer package 1.3-0bo2 1.3-2 non-maintainer 1.3-0bo2.1 1.3-2.1 That is, bo-unstable version numbers use the revision of the latest package in "bo", concatenated with "bo" and the Debian revision of the corresponding package in "hamm". In case of a new upstream version in "hamm", the version number is taken from the new "hamm" version with Debian revision 0, concatenated with "bo" and the Debian revision of the "hamm" package. (I hope everyone can follow :-) -----------cut-here----------- -- Christian Schwarz Do you know [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], Debian GNU/Linux? [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit PGP-fp: 8F 61 EB 6D CF 23 CA D7 34 05 14 5C C8 DC 22 BA http://www.debian.org http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .