On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 03:33:30PM +0000, Michael Elkins wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 07:49:13AM +0200, Petr Pisar wrote: > >In other words, the mutt is 4 years affected and the burden of maintainance > >lies on downstream distributors. This is the only but serious problem I can > >see at mutt project. > > I have little knowledge of how mutt actually is packaged for various OS > distributions, so could you give me an overview of the process? I assumed > that packagers would be pulling in bugfixes from the mutt mercurial > repository and overlaying any distribution specific patches on top. How > does a new release versus pulling from the repository make a difference in > your process? > Distributor does not pull patches from mutt repository magically. First is user who hits a bug. User files the bug to the distributor. Distributor has to reproduce the bug and after that he starts working with mutt upstream. Distributor finds a fix in mutt repository, he needs to back-port the fix to his release (which is sometimes easy, sometimes almost impossible becacause the commit depends on previous commits or the fix is scattered to more commits or even introduces a regression that's fixed by another commit without any direct reference). Then distributor releases patched package to the user, some distribitions have a testing phase where other people get involved. And all of this work would be saved if mutt upstream released new versions more frequently. Don't forget that you have to multiply this effort with number of distributors.
> Back in December I put out a call for patches > (http://marc.info/?l=mutt-dev&m=135586839208976&w=2) and I thought I had > pulled in patches from all the major OS distributions. If I have missed > some, please do let me know. I know and I appreciate it. Merging fixes from distributors is very positive step because distributors gain certainty the patches will appear in new release. However there must be next release in reasonable time distance. -- Petr
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