[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#718272:

[Chris Bainbridge]

Luke-Jr wrote:
> I agree with Scott's assessment, although I would note that Debian *does* have
> a suite that addresses the needs of Bitcoin: stable-updates. Mandatory
> protocol rule changes would seem to fall within the "broken by the flow of
> time" category. Thoughts?

I agree.

Scott Howard wrote:
> I think this is the way to go once bitcoin version "1.0" (or the
> equivalent) is released. It requires users to enable the
> stable-updates repository

This is not necessary as the debian-installer already enables
stable-updates by default.

> we should block migration to testing until either upstream supports
> stable releases or we have a volunteer that works closely enough with upstream
> code (an upstream developer) that is will to backport security and network-
> related fixes.

Backporting is not necessary. The package can be version bumped for a
security update, or version bumped in stable-updates for non-security
changes. In the case of Bitcoin, mandatory network changes could
arguably be considered "security updates" if they prevent the bitcoin
server from working, because being unable to update the copy of the
blockchain would open up additional attack vectors.

tor has very similar restrictions (version <1.0, network protocol
could change) and yet it is in both stable and testing. Testing
already has other software (cgminger, bfgminer) that is reliant on the
bitcoin protocol. Given all this, I do not think that the problems
presented in this bug are a reason to hold up bitcoin from entering
testing or, ultimately, stable.