Package upgrade policy, was: Re: Feisty upgrades?

[Jonathan Hirschman]

Richard Mancusi wrote:
>
> Unfortunately, GnuCash remains the same - a version not recommended
> to be used, while the correct version is available in Debian.  Obviously
> I don't know how many packages are in this "condition". 

Ghostscript seems to be another one. Latest version in Debian
stable/testing is 8.54; latest in unstable is 8.56 (which is the latest,
period).

Ubuntu seems to lag. Edgy gets 8.50, which is seriously old and not
recommended by the devs. Feisty gets 8.54; Gutsy shows 8.56. There is
nothing in Edgy backports :(

To put this in perspective: 8.54 is a year old (and doesn't support the
latest PDF spec very well). 8.56 came out in March. Debian 4.0 shipped
before Feisty. Is this how it is supposed to be? If so, Ubuntu may be
too "slow" for me.

I thought that Ubuntu tracked Debian unstable? Can anyone tell me
when/if packages tend to get updated for a given revision? I have a
great Edgy server install going, but I use Ghostscript in a custom app,
and I'd really hate having to build from source...

jh