[request-tracker-maintainers] 4.2?

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Thu, Jan 02, 2014 at 04:19:23PM -0600, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 1, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Dominic Hargreaves <dom at earth.li> wrote:

> > The big question in my mind is about whether we need to rename the
> > package to request-tracker4.2. I'd prefer not to because it's more
> > work both for the package maintainer and for users, but there are couple
> > of reasons for doing so:
> >
> > * API incompatibilty for extensions? Need to check upstream
> > * Allow coinstallability for testing upgrades (not a particularly
> >   compelling reason; testing should probably be done on another host
> >   anyway)
> > * Giving the users the choice of 4.0 or 4.2 whilst both are maintained
> >   upstream. This would mean that RT 4.2 could hit unstable sooner.
> >
> > What do others think?
> 
> Another reason to maintain separate packages is historical precedence.
> 
> I don't think there is substantial amount of extra work for users with
> a new package; do you? How much more work is it for the maintainers?

Splitting to request-tracker4.2 makes upgrades more complicated; in
other words, to do it "nicely" means writing a configuration/upgrade
framework which works between packages, probably introducing a separate
common package. This is something we've failed to do up to now (see
#511260). On the flip side, upgrades within the same package are pretty
much a done deal now and work well. So the answer to your question is
essentially quite a lot more work on both sides :)

Cheers,
Dominic.