Question of HP updates that depend on new packages

[Duncan Coutts]

On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 12:17 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
> >> The other specific considerations in this mail aside, sticking with
> >> older versions of a package sounds like a recipe for disaster.
> >
> > It's certainly not ideal. It'd conflict with the HP goal of trying to
> > synchronise the versions of packages people are targeting and using.
> 
> I don't see what is so awful about it.  Libraries often have a  
> "stable" version and a "development" version.  Sticking with the  
> stable version is exactly the right thing for the Platform to do,  
> until the maintainer of the library declares that the development  
> version is sufficiently robust to become the new stable branch.

Sure, in general there can be stable versions and development / preview
versions.

In the current case, the maintainer recommends the latest version as the
stable one and the one to use. There would be some unfortunate
fragmentation in this case if no solution is found.

> And it is not a disaster if the Platform packagers take a different view  
> on the relative stability of different versions.

That's true, and there are cases like that, but if lots of people agree
with the package maintainer (or depend on the latest features) then in
practise we do get fragmentation.

Duncan