Early backports to reduce post-release fixes

[Reinhard Tartler]

Luca Falavigna <dktrkranz at ubuntu.com> writes:

> How can we help motu-sru to avoid some SRU requests for trivial tasks,
> allowing a greater audience to test packages without the need to
> upgrade? My proposal is to prepare early backports of the most commonly
> used packages in Universe. Starting from Feature Freeze, we could
> identify some packages with high popcon and determine if it's worth to
> prepare a backport for current stable release (new upstream releases,
> new features to be tested, and so on), so the main part of the Ubuntu
> users can effectively test packages and report issues, so they can be
> fixed in time for the release.

Short: I like the idea.

I could imagine a lightweight approach: Activate the ~ubuntu-dev (or
~motu) PPA, and use it as "backports-staging" archive. Proposed policy:

- proposed package backports should be tracked via a malone bug
- any motu may upload there if he feels that a package should be
  backported, mentioning the LP bug number
- the backport teams tracks these bugs and approves backports if
  "enough" positive feedback from users has been given in the LP bug


-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4