[Pkg-bitcoin-devel] Bug#718272: Bug#718272: Bitcoin still not ready for stable release in Debian

[Anthony Towns]

Hey Luke, Jonas,

On Fri, Nov 03, 2017 at 08:31:33PM +0000, Luke Dashjr wrote:
> > >> I believe Bitcoin is now stable enough for stable release.
> > > Things have only gotten less stable upstream since 2013...
> > Please provide references supporting that.

0.15 is certainly "stable" in the sense that it's a well-maintained
piece of software, but it's not stable in the sense that it should
be reliably used without changes over a period of years. For instance
0.15.1 is currently being prepared to work around p2p problems that are
expected within a couple of weeks.

> > > What is the plan for getting security and protocol change updates
> > > backported to Debian stable?
> > Debian standard procedures for updating stable packages.
> In my experience, that has been "never update, even when fixes are available" 
> except for highly-visible security issues. :(

Not sure if there's something more up to date, but

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2016/11/msg00009.html

says:

   * Fixes must be minimal and relevant and include a sufficiently
     detailed changelog entry

which seems like it generally precludes uploading new upstream releases
(0.14 to 0.15 at least, perhaps 0.15 to 0.15.1 would be fine). I don't
think upstream will generally be providing sufficiently "minimal and
relevant" backports to satisfy that rule...

AIUI, stable-updates is a subset of proposed-updates, so it's not easier
to get in there than regular updates to stable?

(If the release team are willing to accept new upstream releases into
stable or stable-updates, this seems like a good idea; it just doesn't
seem like they would be as far as I can see?)

Cheers,
aj