Suggestion for new repository of software - new versions of software in between Ubuntu releases

[Jeff Waugh]

On Tue, 2004-11-09 at 21:22 -0500, Tim Hull wrote:
> I have a suggestion for a new Ubuntu repository, along the lines
> of universe and multiverse.  It would be called something like
> updateverse and would include updates to software like Firefox,
> Thunderbird, etc in between release.  However, it would only include
> stable updates that don't break anything else (i.e. no major changes,
> only things like Firefox 1.0 and OpenOffice 1.1.3 - not things like 
> updating to X.org from XFree86 or to a new stable kernel series).?
> Is this possible in the future?

It's highly unattractive, because it's unsupportable. We have very rapid
six monthly releases, which are supported for 18 months at the minimum.

If we had updates available for the stable releases, we would have to
support the versions in stable as well as the updated versions, and we
could never guarantee that the updated versions won't break things in
the stable release. It increases our (already very big) support matrix. 

Consider that when PerkyPenguin comes out, we'll be finishing 18 months
of WartyWarthog support, at the 12 month mark for HoaryHedgehog support,
and at the 6 month mark for GrumpyGroundhog. That's a lot of support! If
we had an updates stream on top of each of those, and had multiple
updates of each package, we'd be - at least - doubling that matrix. Ow!

Firefox and OpenOffice.org updates *are* major changes, and the right
place to do those is during our development process. Six months is not a
long time to wait for *stable*, up-to-date, fully integrated, supported
software. 

Better than you'll get anywhere else. :-)

- Jeff

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