[systemd-devel] systemd-stable and Debian's systemd release strategy

[Michael Biebl]

Quite simple:
stable releases: Debian policy is rather strict regarding stable
uploads and some of the changes that landed in systemd-stable are not
really considered suitable for a stable upload to Debian. That's why
we only cherry-pick select fixes.
If the Debian policy was more lax in that regard, uploading
system-stable releases would be an option (and initially I had planned
to do that, but backed away seeing that the diff between 247.3 and
237.13 was rather large)

backports: mostly me lacking time. I didn't get around to do a bpo
upload of v252. One significant issue was the split of
systemd-resolved into a separate package. We discussed that internally
if it would be too disruptive for a bpo upload or not and whether this
should be rolled back for a bpo upload, which would mean additional
work.
We mostly agreed after internal discussion to upload the changes as-is
to bpo and I've been looking into this recently but ran into issues
with autopkgtest failing for v252 which needs further investigation.
Some of the issues I could fix, some might need more work.

Am Mi., 18. Jan. 2023 um 10:52 Uhr schrieb tok <tok at redux1.net>:
>
> Apologies, was not subscribed previously but would also seek the input
> of systemd-devel on the matter below.
>
> Regards, tok
>
>
> On 18.01.23 10:05, tok wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is not meant as blame but I sincerely would like to understand the mechanisms/approach and apparent complexities behind it: I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on Debian's strategy of releasing systemd packages?
> >
> > Commendably, the systemd project maintains a dedicated repository (systemd-stable) for stable branches with backported patches available to all distros, but apparently the Debian project is not leveraging this to its advantage:
> >
> > Current version in Debian stable:
> > 247.3-7+deb11u1 (March 2022)
> > Latest version of this major release in systemd-stable:
> > 247.13 (Dec 2022, 10 minor versions ahead)
> >
> > Current version in Debian backports:
> > 251.3-1~bpo11+1 (Aug 2022)
> > Latest version of this major release in systemd-stable:
> > 251.10 (Dec 2022, 7 minor versions ahead)
> >
> >
> > What is the reason for this gap? I understand package maintaining is a challenging task, especially for something complex like systemd. But would the systemd-stable repo not provide already a lot of groundwork (as in: backporting bugfixes) for this, to reduce the effort?
> >
> > Thanks for insights, regards,
> > tok