LibreOffice 5.0.2.2

[Bjoern Michaelsen]

Hi,

On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 02:34:08PM -0500, Nicholas Skaggs wrote:
> On 02/13/2016 10:22 AM, Ian Bruntlett wrote:
> >Hi All,
> >
> >Was using LibreOffice Draw to do some nice inlays for Ubuntu CDs (stored in
> >DVD boxes) when Draw crashed, losing 10 minutes worth of work.
> >
> >This is the first time I've experienced a LibreOffice crash that I can
> >remember. Would it be a good idea to give people the option to, say, run
> >"LibreOffice Legacy" (i.e. v4) as well as LibreOffice 5?
> On the topic of having both available, that's a question for Bjoern. It's a
> matter of packaging and maintaining both. Presumably, you may be able to get
> it from a ppa, though it's not clear if you can have both installed at once.

So, there are three scenarios:

1/ running the LibreOffice version matching the Ubuntu release
   (e.g. Ubuntu trusty and LibreOffice 4.2, Ubuntu wily and LibreOffice 5.0)
   => this is supported by Ubuntu archives
2/ running a newer LibreOffice version on an older Ubuntu release
   (e.g. Ubuntu trusty and LibreOffice 5.0, Ubuntu wily and LibreOffice 5.1)
   => this is community supported by LibreOffice ppas
3/ running an older LibreOffice version on an newer Ubuntu release
   => this is not supported

For 3/ note that even upstream LibreOffice supports releases for some 9 months
only, so older LibreOffice releases would be a bad idea anyway for security
reasons. The exception to this is distros (like Ubuntu) supporting LTS versions
(thus LibreOffice 4.2 is still supported with security fixes on Ubuntu 14.04).

If you care for high stability, the last number of the LibreOffice version (z
in x.y.z) is the bugfix release -- the higher the better. Our SRU process is a
bit slow to keep up with those unfortunately, so those updates happen only with
security updates (like the LibreOffice 5.0.5 that just happened on wily).
But the LibreOffice ppas are usually quite quick, and have the bugfix releases
on the same day as upstream usually (so you would have had LibreOffice 5.0.3,
5.0.4 -- each fixing bugs, not introducing new features --  over 5.0.2) quite
early on with that.

As for a "LibreOffice Legacy" -- we are simply lacking manpower for supporting
that. If we would go about that, the least painful approach would be to
forward-port the LibreOffice LTS version (e.g. currently LibreOffice 4.2.x from
trusty) to the non-LTS (e.g. wily). Volunteers for that are welcome of course. ;)


Best,

Bjoern