Kubuntu Updates Policy

[Scott Kitterman]

I have an outstanding action to draft an updates policy for Kubuntu and 
take it for the tech board for approval.  The two questions are what to put 
in -updates and what to put in -backports.

Historically (before Hardy), Ridelll used to publish updated KDE version 
updates outside of the Ubuntu infrastructure.

In Hardy, we put KDE 3.5.10 first in backports and later in updates. IMO, 
it went OK, but took a lot of work to get through regressions.  We also 
backports Qt 4.4 to Hardy and it did not go well (lots of problems with 
non-KDE apps).

For Intrepid, we released with KDE 4.1.2 and put 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 in updates 
(via proposed of course).  We also put 4.2.0 in backports.  All of this 
went well and we had very good upstream support for dealing with 
regressions in the point releases.

I think we mostly expected this to be the model for the future.

In Jaunty, we got a bit cross-threaded between Qt and KDE expectations.  Qt 
expected Qt 4.5/KDE 4.2 and KDE expected Qt 4.4/KDE 4.2.  As a result, we 
have some minor regressions that are not supported by upstream.  Currently 
updates are limited to PPAs.

We know that KDE 4.4 will be developed with Qt 4.6.  These will be our 
targets for 10.04.

Based on the experience with backporting Qt 4.4 in Hardy, I am convinced 
backports of 2nd digit updates of Qt is a bad idea.

Based on the experience with 4.1 and 4.2, I'm comfortable with pushing 3rd 
digit KDE updates to proposed/updates as long as we have upstream support.

I think that given the pace of Qt/KDE updates it will be rare to have a 
good mix available for backports.

Here is what I propose:

New KDE versions (e.g. 4.3/4.4) only in PPAs.

Micro-version updates for KDE to -proposed/updates if we have upstream 
supoort (we did for Intrepid and will for Karmic/Lucid and do not for 
Jaunty).

Micro-version updates for KDE to backports otherwise.

No backports of major Qt updates.

I think we need to do some experimenting with the idea of micro-version Qt 
backports.

The backports aspects of this don't need tech board approval.  I'd like to 
push KDE 4.2.4 to Jaunty backports ASAP  and then look at giving Qt 4.5.2 a 
go.

If people generally agree with this approach, I'll draft up something for 
tech board approval for 4.3/4.4 in updates for Karmic and Lucid.

Scott K