Proposal: sunset the backports pockets

[Seth Arnold]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 02:24:30PM +0200, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> I'd love to see it working the same way it works in Debian.  With
> random developers uploading (AND TAKING ON THEM THE RESPONSABILITY TO
> KEEP IT WORKING AND POSSIBLY UPDATED EVER AFTER), whilst a "team" is
> only tasked with basically verifying that the version string is sane and
> won't break update.

'Put the responsibility on the uploader' sounds like PPAs.

Ondřej Surý's PPA is a good example of a backports-like experience
where the developer has indicated how to report bugs in his package,
takes care to mark the packages with a visible version string to help
everyone properly triage issues, etc: https://deb.sury.org/

I think part of why -backports hasn't worked for Ubuntu in the time that
I've been paying attention is that PPAs do a decent job of replacing it.
Anyone who would be interested in using -backports can instead upload
to their own PPA and get immediate sucess.

I think it's time we remove -backports and all the documentation around
it. (Of course, actually removing packages from the -backports package
wouldn't be kind to the few using it, so we might not really be able to
clean up after it for a few years, but we can at least start the process.)

Yes even this requires doing work (and asking other people to do work).
But I can easily volunteer to clean up a few wiki pages, far easier than
I can volunteer to tend to the -backports pocket itself.

Thanks



ps I was curious to see how many packages are in -backports:

sarnold at wopr:/srv/mirror/ubuntu/dists $ for d in focal-backports bionic-backports xenial-backports trusty-backports; do echo === $d === ; pushd $d > /dev/null ; zcat */binary-amd64/Packages.gz | awk -F/ '/^Filename/ {print $4;}' | sort -u ; popd > /dev/null ; done
=== focal-backports ===
cockpit
ibus-typing-booster
lvm2
sanlock
=== bionic-backports ===
bird2
cockpit
debhelper
dh-autoreconf
elixir-lang
erlang
hvac
ibus-avro
ibus-typing-booster
init-system-helpers
iproute2
rabbitmq-server
smartmontools
vaultlocker
=== xenial-backports ===
ansible
appstream
autopkgtest
cockpit
debhelper
dh-autoreconf
distro-info
gir-to-d
golang-1.10
golang-1.10-race-detector-runtime
golang-1.9
golang-1.9-race-detector-runtime
ibus-avro
ibus-typing-booster
ldc
libarchive
lmdb
lxc
lxcfs
lxc-templates
lxd
meson
mustache-d
ninja-build
python3-lxc
=== trusty-backports ===
0ad
0ad-data
acsccid
ansible
apache2
asic0x
astyle
autopkgtest
boinc
cgmanager
cgroup-lite
chemps2
clamtk
clinfo
cppcheck
cppreference-doc
ddrescueview
dianara
drmips
duck
fio
flex
fonts-noto
gcalcli
gf-complete
git-dpm
gitolite3
golang
gramps
haproxy
hedgewars
icinga
identity4c
iperf3
iucode-tool
jerasure
jq
kdeconnect
keepalived
libcloud
liberasurecode
libndp
libnss-cache
libnss-securepass
libpam-ufpidentity
libqmi
libradsec
libseccomp
lmdb
lxc
lxcfs
lxd
makedumpfile
milou
minidlna
modem-manager-gui
moonshot-gss-eap
moonshot-ui
nagios-plugins-contrib
nautilus-admin
nautilus-hide
nvidia-modprobe
nvidia-settings
osm-gps-map
p4vasp
parsedatetime
pdns
php-apcu
povray
prodigal
prosody
pumpa
pyclamd
py-lmdb
pypolicyd-spf
pysimplesoap
pyspf
python-debianbts
python-geoip
python-ldap3
python-pkginfo
python-pyeclib
python-releases
python-socketio-client
qbittorrent
reportbug
screen
shellcheck
shibboleth-resolver
sosreport
spyder
squid-deb-proxy
stress-ng
svtplay-dl
swig
sysdig
tinyxml2
torsocks
transdecoder
twine
ubumirror
unity-tweak-tool
wesnoth-1.12
xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin
xml2rfc
yaggo
yelp-tools
yelp-xsl
zsh

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