Hi Dominik,
happy new year to you and everybody.
I read your proposal, and the whole discussion with great interest.
In brief, I think that it would be wise to uncouple the fast-paced
("fast-forwards" ?) repository that you propose from the stable backports,
and I hope that you will be able to get support from the Debian
infrastructure for making it happen.
Thomas sent the link to the 2013 proposal on "Developer repositories for
Debian" (https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg00131.html),
which has a great potential. If you have the resources for doing so,
how about sending a patch to the FTP team that would implement a
solution in line with this proposal ? Debian support for this endeavor
might be possible though sposored developments such as the Google Summer
of Code or the Outreachy programs, for instance. If the resulting work
is integrated, you would get an easy way to use the Debian
infrastructure for your goals, and if it is rejected, well, at least you
will be able to run it on your side, and it may be an asset for
experimenting or for operating through stable releases in the long run.
Regarding the details of your proposal, I have not seen keywords
regarding regression checks and reproducible builds. These are powerful
tools that did not exist when the Debian Backports were invented. Have
you considered utilising them ? Perhaps it is too naive, but on my
side, for the leaf packages I maintain, I have always been dreaming of a
repository where I can just migrate a package from unstable (instead of
rebuilding) if there is sufficient evidence that it works flawlessly on
a Stable background. Which may be why I am trying to convince you to
implemente "Developer repositories" (aka "PPAs" or "Bikesheds") for
solving your own problem :)
Have a nice day,
Charles
--
Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
Debian Med packaging team http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tooting from work, https://mastodon.technology/@charles_plessy
Tooting from home, https://framapiaf.org/@charles_plessy
