[ubuntu-studio-devel] Backports for Ubuntu Studio Xenial

[Kaj Ailomaa]

On Tue, May 3, 2016, at 06:33 PM, Len Ovens wrote:
> On Tue, 3 May 2016, Ross Gammon wrote:
> 
> > On 05/03/2016 08:01 AM, Kaj Ailomaa wrote:
> >> We could in fact do a round of backports for trusty, as it is still what
> >> many people uses.
> >>
> >
> > I will add the table. We could try and backport all the way to Trusty
> > from Yakkety via Xenial. But this gets harder if the dependencies have
> > changed too much (or not even available).
> >
> > We could start on Trusty from Xenial right away of the version is still
> > the same as Yakkety. Trusty users are probably more in need at the
> > moment than the early Xenial adopters :-)
> 
> My advice is against that. It is true there is not anything I know for X, 
> but anyone staying with T is probably doing so because they wish to
> finish 
> a project with the version of SW that is there. (for example ardour 2 has 
> a set of bugs that affect the sound of things mixed there, A3/4 will be 
> able to use those sessions, but they will sound different and may need 
> remixing) EQ10Q in X is not compatable with T (I tried :) but EQ10Q from
> W 
> is ok. X is using a different version of GCC (5 not 4) and applications 
> that use plugins have to use the same version for both application and 
> plugin. (this is why EQ10Q beta 5.1 will work in T but 2.0 will not BTW)
> 
> The only two packages That may be worth doing are jackd and calf plugins 
> (provided calf can be done with GCC4), qjackctl is not compatable with
> lib 
> versions in T. However, anyone who does audio with Jack has already 
> figured out the right workaround for jack and knows to avoid calf reverb.
> 
> Maybe things are different in graphics or video though.

Backports is not for fixing bugs. That should be done as SRUs. If
there's a calf bug that can blow speakers, please at least let us know
what the bug is so someone can prepare a patch and do a SRU.

Backports are something the user can choose. But, our users are not used
to them. So, I could imagine us adding small info thing for
-default-settings which lets the user know that backports are coming,
and let them have the ability to deselect backports, if they do not wish
to have them. Also, how to undo updates, if they were done by mistakes.
We probably need to educate our users a bit on this.