[maemo-developers] Keeping Glib up to date (was RE: Diablo, do we need a separate repository?)

[From: josh.soref at nokia.com]

> > That said, to some extent people obviously do want to use 
> > later versions of libraries when/where possible. No one
> > loves the idea of using code that's many years out of
> > date with its ever growing set of known bugs.
> > However sometimes bug-wise compatibility triumphs.

Graham Cobb wrote:
> During the life of an installed release, I agree. 

> Between Nokia-issued firmware releases, I disagree. 

I suspect the original hope was that diablo would have been delivered by
SSU.

If you keep that in mind, does it help change your view?

Also note that the merge cost for hundreds of packages exceeds the small
window for a project like diablo (which really really was a dot
release).

> My view (I realise you disagree)

Actually, in this case, I have no particular opinion. I understand why
Nokia did it, and I can understand why you're upset.

>From a technical perspective, the browser team did not have enough
time/resources to merge to trunk (nor was there a stable trunk of any
value until long after we were frozen) and get any work done for diablo.
We therefore had to choose not to merge to trunk and plan to do it for a
future release. Most other projects (excluding wimax) probably had much
fewer resources than the browser (in some cases they probably had no
resources at all).

> is that at each new release Nokia should update all shared libraries.

I think the key is that you're ascribing this to be an OS release.
It isn't. it's a dot release. We never claimed it was a new OS release,
the marketing information on this is quite clear, and I can't imagine
anyone from Nokia would have claimed otherwise.

http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php

> You are running Debian stable, because you prefer the stable Debian
tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little
bit outdated compared to other distributions. That is where backports
come in. 

Think of chinook as a debian stable. Diablo is basically a collection of
libraries provided by Nokia for chinook. You still have old libraries,
and because it isn't actually newer software, the more you use it the
more "little bit outdated" your software will become until an actual new
distribution is released.

As for how you manage to get a backports.org up and running, obviously
that the package manager makes it harder is well... Unfortunate. But
such is life.