[SRU] Is there a process to have universe sources promoted to main in stable series?

[Lukas Märdian]

Hi Sebastien,

Am 01.12.22 um 11:31 schrieb Sebastien Bacher:
> Hey there,
> 
> That's a question probably for the SRU team.

The question if a new software feature can be enabled in a stable series post feature freeze is probably a question for the SRU team, indeed. But I don't think there's any formal process to it.
But this case also requires involvement of the MIR team, IMO.

> I've recently uploaded webp-pixbuf-loader as a new package to 22.04 (SRU https://launchpad.net/bugs/1993789). The goal is to enable webp support on the desktop in the LTS. The package got promoted to main in Kinetic.
> I would like to know if there is a formal process to ask for promotion in a stable serie?
> The intend is to have the package pulled it by our default image viewer (eog), so that would be a SRU to eog adding a depends or recommends on webp-pixbuf-loader. Can I go ahead with the SRU or should I get input from the MIR team first?

First, we (the MIR team) had a very similar case with fwupd -> protobuf-c in the past, although that was for hardware enablement, which might be a bit stronger case than enablement of a new software feature:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/protobuf-c/+bug/1956617


So retroactive promotion to "main" in stable series is possible and has been done in the past, and we've been using the normal MIR process to find consensus. The MIR and potentially security teams should agree, which should be easy if the same version of a software is already supported in another series. I'd suggest using the same MIR bug, adding the required target series, to get formal agreement from the MIR and security teams, before uploading any SRU pulling in the new dependency.

> Also for webp-pixbuf-loader the version in 22.04 is the same than the one that got reviewed and promoted by the MIR team, but we have another similar need for webkitgtk where we would like to build using libwpe/wpebackend-fdo but in this case the version in 22.04 is older than the one that got promoted in Kinetic, would that change the answer?

As outlined above, I'd suggest to use the same MIR bug that was used for promotion in Kinetic, adding the required target series and asking for MIR review/ACK from the corresponding teams, before uploading an enablement SRU.
It might be harder, require some extra work or even not be possible at all to get the older (currently unsupported) version of a software promoted to main, depending on the MIR/security assessment.

Cheers,
   Lukas