Re: Linux Mint 19.3 has 3-year-old ddrescue!

[Shahrukh Merchant]

Thanks Timothy (and Tom too for your earlier reply).

Great, your instructions were exactly what I needed! I had googled 
around and came across these instructions at 
https://tinyapps.org/blog/201609300700_ddrescue_ubuntu.html for a manual 
install to address a similar version situation a few years ago, but 
yours are more detailed and well explained, so I'm going to try that.

Speaking of Linux Mint vs. Ubuntu vs. package versions, since I've 
recently been delving into all this (yeah, a quarantine project ...): I 
happen to have seen that Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is due out literally any day 
now (23 Apr 2020), and I learnt that Linux Mint typically has their 
update based on that in 2 months, i.e., end-June 2020. But there seems 
no evidence that that will contain a more recent version of ddrescue 
(how would one find out?) as I assume the software repositories run in 
parallel and are not specifically tied to a particular OS release.

So what is not clear to me, not just for the gddrescue package but 
really for any third-party software package:
- Which version of software gets incorporated into a particular release 
(LTS or not) of Linux? Or, as I speculated above, are the software 
repository updates really independent (in their timelines) of the OS 
updates?
- Who decides this and based on what?
- What is the minimal regression testing that needs to happen to 
"certify" a new version of a package gets the green light, and who does 
this? The software developer (António in this case) if he wants to see 
his updated versions get more widespread use? Anyone? No one?

I looked around some more and came across MOTU, the package maintainers' 
group, which I guess partially answers some of my questions above. So 
how does one contact the ddrescue "person" in MOTU to encourage him or 
her to update it?

Just getting my feet wet (again) with how Linux ecosystems currently 
work after being away from Unix for more time than I'd care to admit, so 
sorry if these questions seem somewhat basic.

Shahrukh

On 2020-04-20 11:59 AM, Timothy Beryl Grahek wrote:
> Wow, this is pretty remarkable. I wonder if the package maintainer can
> be contacted to get this ironed out. By the way, Linux Mint and Ubuntu
> share the same packages, so the software repository for Linux Mint is
> actually the same one as Ubuntu and there are no differences. Note
> that Linux Mint 19.3 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Until a new LTS
> comes out (20.04), Linux Mint will continue to be based on Ubuntu
> 18.04 LTS. https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/gddrescue ...