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Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 04:02:40 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: owl-users@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Owl-current moved to glibc 2.3.x

On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 10:18:14AM +0100, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> Solar Designer wrote:
> >If, however, we make a 1.2-stable without a 1.2 release, I don't feel
> >we'd have the right to abandon 1.1-stable like that.  And maintaining
> >three branches at once (1.1-stable, 1.2-stable, and current) would be
> >too much overhead.
> 
> 1.1 and 1.2 would be binary compatible, so 1.1 could possibly be dropped 
> from maintenance in favor of 1.2. Are there any strong suggestions 
> against this?

If we make a 1.2 release, this can be done.  If not, then it'd be a
violation of what had been promised to those installing 1.1 release.

As for technical problems, the only significant one is with Perl.  I
know that people have Owl 1.1 installs with many custom Perl modules
built, and we must not force them to re-build all of those modules
just to install a security update (that'd be the case if we either
abandon 1.1-stable in favor of a 1.2-stable, or roll all stuff from
current-pre-Big-Update into 1.1-stable).

[perl]
> Hadn't thought of that, but I think sensible users can choose not to 
> upgrade perl if they rely to heavily on extra modules they've built, or 
> simply build them again for perl 5.8.

Not upgrading Perl, if we do roll the new Perl into the currently
maintained Owl-stable, would leave them with an unmaintained package.
What if there's a security update needed?  Would they be forced to
re-build all of their modules for Perl 5.8 in one day?

> Besides, I'm sure a lot of people 
> were running current as it was before the big update and has already 
> upgraded their perl packages so the problem with perl is double-edged.

True.  But to make everyone happy we'd have to maintain three
branches, and that would slow down the project.  Those who went with
Owl-current instead of Owl 1.1-stable knew what they were doing, right?
So no reason to slow down our development just because more people
were using Owl-current in production.

> Just keep updates for 1.1 in a separate directory. This way users can 
> pick what updates they would like to install, but there would be no need 
> to drop what's currently the most recent version of 1.1 binary 
> compatible packages, or jumble them together with packages post-biggie.

This once again means either three branches to maintain or people
using unmaintained stuff.

-- 
Alexander Peslyak <solar at openwall.com>
GPG key ID: B35D3598  fp: 6429 0D7E F130 C13E C929  6447 73C3 A290 B35D 3598
http://www.openwall.com - bringing security into open computing environments

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