Hi Manuel, On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 05:01:08PM +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote: > Hi Muammar, > > 2011/10/13 Muammar El Khatib <muam...@debian.org>: > > There are some packages which depends on CEGUI that will fail to build > > because > > of the change of the API. There are not that many, but still. Of course I > > don't > > want to ship obsolete things, but I don't want to break too many things. > > If you think that there's a need for that in Debian, you can introduce > a new package for versions with different APIs/ABIs, like [1]. > Hopefully CEGUI doesn't need to ship so many versions, but maybe it > could do with a couple of them. > > [1] > http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-db-de...@lists.alioth.debian.org >
I think that answering your mail is kind of useless, but anyways I will do it even knowing that from my position I don't have all the reason. Regarding this point, I had talked to debian-release and they told me to not *ship different versions of CEGUI*. Period. So, I wasn't going to do the contrary. This new version, already in unstable, it's going to cause some FTBFS, and in the case of the game SMC there is not yet a good patch for making it compile using this new version. I'll try contact upstream to see if he has done something. > Anyway, from my POV it is to be expected that a new stable version of > a package (not a snapshot, not a pre-release... but a proper stable > upstream release of mature software) is shipped in Debian within > weeks/months of the upstream release date. > This always depend on the maintainer. In any case, your argument is too logic, it is the expected behaviour to have. But not all the releases have to be shipped in debian just because they are new. And this has to do with what the goals in debian are. > This is the case with hugely disruptive changes, like upgrading to > GNOME-3 or KDE-4, when this affects to the normal workflow of > thousands/millions of people that would prefer to resist the change; > because it's generally understood (even if it's painful in many cases > to move on) that eventually one has to do that anyway, if there's > nobody who wants to take care of the software, and it's going to > bitrot slowly. > > In this particular CEGUI case, you can follow (maybe too late now? > maybe an idea for the future?) the route of having different package > source versions happily living in the archive. You may not want to do As I wrote above, this is not an option in this particular case. > that because of maintainance burden, and that's understandable. But > then again, eventually one has to decide whether it's more > beneficial/harmful to avoid having recent and maintained versions of a > library, because of some projects lagging behind. I think that in You don't have to explain this to me, I don't have a @debian.org for free. > cases like CEGUI the users ultimately prefer having the latests > versions, and that is the case of libraries used in usually very > dynamic projects (instead of, say, raving for the new version of > procmail or bsd-mainutils). > Yes, I partially agree. As this library is used by people who develop games, they need a new version of it. There is no doubt about it as there is no doubt in the fact that my time of response was kind of slow. > Sorry if I sounded rough and rude in the first e-mail, but I sometimes > feel that the Debian world moves at a pace that risks obsolecence > every day, except for a few core packages. And "dying" because of > inaction and fear of what changes might bring is a quite stupid/ironic > way of "dying". > Remember that Debian has some goals. One of those, is stability and homogeneity. But as you can see, I have responded to your request because users are important as well. And the package is now in the unstable suite and you can work in your things. > Regards, and sincere thanks for your efforts. You are welcome. And thanks for being sincere. Regards, -- Muammar El Khatib. Linux user: 403107. Key fingerprint = 90B8 BFC4 4A75 B881 39A3 1440 30EB 403B 1270 29F1 http://muammar.me | http://proyectociencia.org ,''`. : :' : `. `' `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
