MicroReleaseException for LibQApt and Muon Suite SRUs

[Jonathan Thomas]

Hello,

I would like to request that the qapt and muon packages for the
LibQApt and Muon Suite projects be added to the list of micro-release
exceptions for SRUs. [1]

The Muon Suite (and its "guts" LibQApt) play a major role as Kubuntu's
package management tools. As package management is a core part of the
system, it is crucial to keep a steady flow of fixes to the official
distribution channel. At the same time, this means that these updates
must come with a certain level of caution. Both projects come with
monthly bugfix micro-releases keeping with KDE's point release update
policy [2], for which KDE itself in Kubuntu has a similar exception.
[1]

Speaking with my upstream hat on, the micro release update model that
Muon and QApt have used has worked wonderfully for the year that it
has been in effect, with a total of
seven micro releases that have both stuck to the release policy with
no regressions.

The most recent micro release for the 1.2 series [3][4], which Kubuntu
11.10 is based on, contains several fixes that would be cumbersome to
SRU individually. These include:
- A fix for installing foreign-arch packages on multiarch-enabled
systems. (Multi-Arch libraries install fine with the current version,
but foreign-arch runtime packages such as skype cannot be installed)
- Several fixes for the QApt GDebi equivalent that fix some serious
flakiness that the tool had.

Additionally, there are several easily-verifiable fixes to some UI
bugs in Muon which also have a quite low risk of regression.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates/MicroReleaseExceptions
[2] http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Minor_Point_Release_Policy
[3] https://projects.kde.org/news/94
[4] https://projects.kde.org/news/95