releases vs. individual packages

[Donnie Berkholz]

samuel verstraete wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> Again $me the lunar-linux module/package maintainer..
> This might have been handled already in the list somewhere but i
> couldn't really find anything.
> 
> We are a bit confused with the release cycle of xorg7. On one hand you
> seem to have x11r7.0 release
> (http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/X11R7.0/) with even mentions of
> 7.1 releases in which i find all packages available to build a working X
> setup but on the other hand there is a directory on the servers with
> "individual
> releases"  (http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/).
> 
> As a distro we would like to know which we should follow? Are you
> planning to have a regular release of xorg x11r7.x with snapshots of
> what is available in the "individual directory" and should we follow
> that main release cycle or should we as a distro follow the releases in
> the "individual releases" ?
> And if we follow the individual releases will they always be compatible
> with what is available of released packages or is it possible that
> we'll need to include cvs/svn stuff to make things work? We, as a
> distro need to take a decision here and we would like to know a bit
> what your thoughts of this are...

The "safe" way would be to just use releases such as 7.0, 7.1, etc. 
Interim releases of individual packages aren't guaranteed to work well 
with other released packages (see the new compositeproto and fixesproto, 
or the i810 driver) and may require patching or releases of CVS 
snapshots to work as expected. But if you're really into the whole 
bleeding edge thing, that may be worth the effort.

A good way might be to use the major releases (7.0, 7.1, etc) and then 
cherry-pick individual releases that are relevant, provide useful fixes 
and don't break anything. Good examples might be the xf86-input-vmmouse 
release that fixes 64-bit architectures, or the xdm releases.

HTH,
Donnie