package updates

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 10:41:46PM +0000, James Tappin wrote:
> Updates do not generally introduce new versions of packages (except at
> the micro-version level), but provide fixes to the existing version. If
> there are serious security issues the fixes will be backported to the
> current version [I think but am not sure that the only time a major
> version change would occur within a release would be when a security fix
> could not be backported]. So in short I would not expect to see FF8 etc.
> until version 12.04.

The Mozilla products tend to be exceptions to this due to the way their
product cycle works and the infeasibility of backporting security
updates.  For example, Ubuntu 11.04 as released had Firefox 4.0, but
Firefox 7.0.1 is currently in the security updates for 11.04.

So, on the contrary, I think you can expect to see Firefox 8 in security
updates for 11.04 and 11.10 fairly soon (I'm not giving away any secrets
by saying this; they're undergoing testing in the
ubuntu-mozilla-security PPA already).  Our security team keeps in close
touch with Mozilla on this and has dedicated engineering time for
keeping those packages up to date.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]