[braindump] ppa update discontents

[John Arbash Meinel]

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Martin Pool wrote:
...

> Maverick's bzr has its copy of python-configobj cut out, but that
> library is not shipped on hardy.  Dealing with things like this make
> me wonder a lot whether it's a good use of time to keep supporting
> many old platforms.

When I did it in the past, this was one of the biggest pain points. At
the time it was python-central vs python-support. But the same idea
still applies. That something like 'autoppa' isn't enough, because there
can be *large* differences between versions, not just a trivial repackaging.

The next biggest headache is the combinatorics of M packages by N distro
series. And the fact that Launchpad doesn't really let you copy between
series (it claims to let you, but only the binaries, and usually they
don't work like you would want anyway.)

The third is that you have to update all packages in sync, rather than
just one. Though some of that is the fault of the plugin authors that
put rather tight restrictions on the allowed versions of bzr that they
would work with. (Rather than maybe working with a newer version, they
explicitly fail because of a version check.)

I don't have great answers. One possibility is to do more based on
pre-existing branches for a given series, rather than trying to have a
single branch that works across all series.

John
=:->
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