on Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:34 in the Usenet newsgroup gmane.linux.mageia.devel Samuel Verschelde wrote:
[snip] > *** Old backports *** > Remove old backports when newer ones are submitted > - otherwise we let people use old bugged or plagged with security issues > packages, when they don't necessarily know that there are problems with them > - simpler choice : users have to choose between the version in updates and > the > one in backports, not more > - less space on mirrors (fear wesnoth and vegastrike multiple backports !) > > Thank you for reading. > > Best regards, > > Samuel Verschelde It is theoretically possible that there could be multiple versions with bug fixes and feature enhancements with no known security problems in any of them. FireFox appears to be almost going down that path. I think that FF 5 is just FF 4.0.3 with a silly name - please correct me if I am wrong - and 5 should obsolete 4. But I can imagine several versions existing during the life of a LTS release. The deletion criteria should be, "there is a vulnerability that that is not going to be fixed". That is usually, but not always the same as, "there is a new version". Is it possible that a feature enhanced version could be a suggested update until a security hole is discovered in the old version, then the new version becomes an update? If you make an administrative decision that five versions of FF is too many I won't complain.
