SBackup on 10.04 LTS

[Soren Hansen]

2011/9/7 Florian Nemling <florian at nemling.eu>:
> I'm using ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a couple of small servers. Recently, using
> sbackup on a natty machine I noticed the BIG improvements this
> application has received with the latest updates (esp. logging and
> notification). However the updated package has never been added to the
> lucid repositories.
>
> Is this intentional?

Yes, it is. While newer versions often offer improvements of various
kinds, there are always a risks involved in backporting newer versions
to older releases of Ubuntu. Of particular interest are:

 * The risk of regressions. You or I may not experience it, but
someone using the software differently may suddenly end up with a
non-functional backup system. This is generally not an acceptable
risk.

 * Change in config file syntax, command line interface or other
things. Even if there are no regressions at all, people may have
cronjobs that call the software in a specific way, they may have
written custom configurations for it, etc. Breaking these existing,
perfectly functional (albeit without the snazzy new improvements
you're seeing in Natty) setups is simply not acceptable.

However, if there are serious bugs and/or security vulnerabilities we
can fix those specific issues (by backporting the fixes, not by
backporting an entirely new version of the software in question). This
way, we can with good conscience say that we've done everything in our
power to not break existing systems while at the same time addressing
specific problems that users are experiencing.

-- 
Soren Hansen        | http://linux2go.dk/
Ubuntu Developer    | http://www.ubuntu.com/
OpenStack Developer | http://www.openstack.org/