[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Backports inclusion

[Jonathan Marsden]

Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:

> I was aware about bibletime and Qt4.4 issue on hardy and that it
> requires backports enabled but because of this reason I was thinking
> to have separate PPA for the bibletime/hardy. Because now:
> 
> 1) backports are enabled for all hardy - karmic
> 2) not everyone wants to use backports
> 3) it is only needed for 1 package in 1 distribution
> 4) there needs to be additional instructions on how to add backports

1) True, but this enables them *only* for building in the PPA.  Users of
our non-Hardy packages do not need to enable backports to use them.

2) True, but no problem.  Everyone does not *have* to use backports :)

3) True.  It is needed, for that one case for which we had a specific
request for a package from existing BibleTime users -- so I added it.
Where is the problem with that?

4) True, we should add info on enabling backports for Hardy users.  We
can probably just link to existing documentation at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu#Adding%20Other%20Repositories
and specify the include the deb line for Hardy backports

  deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-backports main universe

that we suggest Hardy users add.

Is there actually an *harm* for non-hardy users in leaving the PPA with
backports enabled?  Can you be specific on what that harm is?  If not,
then it's simpler for everyone to have just one Crosswire PPA for end
users to come to, not several, IMO.

The only possibility for problems I can think of is that backports might
contain updated libraries that SWORD/Xiphos/BibleTime use and so, if
built in a PPA with backports enabled, they would have dependencies on
those newer libs.  But I don't actually know of any libraries currently
in *-backports that would affect us in that way.  Do you know of some?
If they do exist, can we simply add manual dependency checks for them,
with a relevant version number, and so prevent the automated dependency
on the very newest version(s)?

Jonathan