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

[tok]

Michael, thank you for taking the time to explain, this is helpful and 
puts things into perspective!

Appreciate the effort of all maintainers.

Regards, tok


On 18.01.23 16:57, Michael Biebl wrote:
> 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