Re: State of Jenkins in Debian

[Guido Günther <agx@sigxcpu.org>]

Hi Tony,
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 09:49:02AM -0700, tony mancill wrote:
[..snip..] 
> My concern is not that we don't have the proper channels through which
> to deliver, but that each means another release to support.  In this
> model we have (at a minimum) unstable, stable-security (which requires
> back-porting of security patches), and stable-backports (which means all
> dependencies must also appear in stable-backports).
> 
> With the current participation in the Java Team, it often feels like
> we're barely able (or not) to keep up with RC/FTBFS bugs and upstream
> releases for unstable.  Supporting stable-backports is another ask that
> is potentially very time-consuming.

I feel your pain. Another way to cope with that is to keep more packages
out of stable. This wouldn't violate the stable guarantees so if you
pick a package out of testing/sid (e.g. by pinning) you know that you're
leaving the stable realm. This would also mark a clear entry point for
new contributors that are interested in a particular application.  I've
done that for several packages, some times it works out well and somebody
steps up to help maintaining it, sometimes it doesn't.
Cheers,
 -- Guido