Parted, advice for distributions

[Andrew Clausen]

Hi all,

This email is directed mainly at package maintainers.

First, 1.0 and 1.2 haven't been maintained for some time.
My fault, I guess, for not making this clear.  But, from
my point of view, they are unmaintainable.  Many of the
bugs are "broken by design".  (Most notably: not using
a constraint solver in 1.2 is practically impossible)

In particular, I think Parted should be removed from
Debian-stable, or updated to 1.4.x.  Also, Debian
(all distributions) should track releases in the stable
branch.  I don't do anything radical in them, and if
you think I am, then complain!

The idea is: bug fixes, improved documentation and
new/updated translations should reach users.  This seems to
be entirely compatible with Debian's policies (and if it
isn't, they are broken, IMHO).  Am I missing something here?

I have heard many-a-debian-user complain about bugs that
were fixed over a year ago.  If you think that being
conservative about updating makes you more stable, you're
kidding yourself.

Second, 1.6.0 is likely to be released fairly soon.  If
you are a distribution that doesn't issue updates very often,
it would be prudent to wait a month or two before considering
1.6.0.  In the past, serious bugs have been found in
early stable releases.  I think this is less likely this
time, because less work has been done on low-level "dangerous"
stuff.  OTOH, these are famous last words...

Anyway, this is all largely my fault for not saying this
before.  But we're all learning ;)

In future, I'll announce when I intend to stop maintaining
stable releases, and give some warning.

BTW: is there any interest in me resuming maintainence on
1.2.x or 1.0.x?  It would be a lot of work... convince me!

Andrew