[Haskell-cafe] Re: [darcs-users] Poll: Do you need to be able to build darcs from source on GHC 6.6?

[Jason Dagit]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:42 PM, Juliusz Chroboczek
<Juliusz.Chroboczek at pps.jussieu.fr> wrote:
>> Debian is nice in some ways and it's really great that stable lives up
>> to its name, but I am sad that Debian has such old software for so
>> long.
>
> Jason,
>
> I know it's frustrating, but please understand where we're coming from.
>
> There are a number of servers that support our research.  The important
> thing to understand is that nobody is paid full-time to maintain these
> servers.  For example, in our lab, the production servers are maintained
> by one technician that has a number of other machines in charge, the server
> for experimental stuff is maintained by myself and one postdoc in our
> copious free time.
>
> As far as the server I'm in charge of is concerned, we apply security
> patches in a timely manner, and we try to check the logs on a weekly basis.
> Other than that, we avoid touching it.
>
> Once every two years, usually in August, we move it from oldstable (head - 2)
> to stable (head - 1).  We then spend a couple of weeks reading the logs
> daily and ironing out any remaining issues.  (The production servers are
> managed even more conservatively, the DNS server has only just switched to
> stable, the web/SMTP server is still running oldstable.)

This point reminds of how the thread drifted from my original intent.

I wanted to know if anyone who is using distros with 6.6 need to be
able to build current releases of darcs from source.  This is of
course different than needing darcs.  These distros have a version of
darcs that shipped with them.  If you're willing to build darcs from
source, where do you draw the line?  Given your contributions to darcs
I would understand  if you said, "I always want to run the latest
stable release of darcs."  That would make sense to me.  If darcs2
format compatibility is an issue then building the 2.x stable releases
up to this point should work.  It's future releases that I would want
to consider dropping support for 6.6.  And we will drop 6.6 support
eventually.  The question is when is the earliest time we can do that.

Jason