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

[Shahrukh Merchant]

Hi António,

> I guess that by "Linux" you mean "a given distribution".

Or I suppose I meant "a given repository," which then affects all 
distributions that use that repository ... though as I mentioned I'm 
still trying to figure out the correlation between those two. :-)

> ... For example, Ubuntu 
> depends on Debian, which currently distributes ddrescue 1.23, and has 
> the packaging of ddrescue 1.25 as a pending task (Mika, are you reading 
> this?) ;-)
> http://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gddrescue
>
> In fact, Debian updated (or skipped) ddrescue 1.22, which is a good 
> thing because 1.22 is one of the few versions with a potentially serious 
> error ...

Mmm, OK. If I see the version column on the left at the *Debian* version 
tracker link http://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gddrescue indeed the current 
STABLE seems to be 1.23 and the previous stable 1.21 (and there is a "To 
Do" list that notes that 1.25 is available as you state).

> Note that (from the link above) Ubuntu seems to be distributing 1.23 also.

OK, I'm still figuring this out, so bear with me. The link you refer to 
is the Debian link, so not sure where you infer that Ubuntu is also 
distributing 1.23. Even though Ubuntu is based off Debian, everything I 
read seems to says that the software repositories are different, 
notwithstanding their using the same package manager (apt).

And the link that Timothy provided 
https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/gddrescue shows that at least the 
Ubuntu 18.04LTS distribution has 1.22, unfortunately the one with the 
bug. But indeed that same page (clicking on "disco" and "eoan" 
respectively) shows that 19.04 and the current 19.10 (and I guess the 
upcoming 20.04LTS?) did in fact update to 1.23.

But since Linux Mint uses the latest Ubuntu LTE, which for the last 2 
years happens to be the one that has ddrescue 1.22, all versions of 
Linux Mint for the last 2 years would have been based on that version, 
it would appear. (Indeed, as I confirmed yesterday when I installed 
ddrescue from the Linux Mint 19.3 default repository, "ddrescue 
--version" shows 1.22.)

Just seems a shame that with ddrescue 1.25 available for a month and a 
half now (and 1.24 for over a year), it appears Ubuntu 20.04LTE will be 
released in 3 days with 1.23, and so all Linux Mint versions through 
June 2022 will consequently be "stuck" at ddrescue v1.23? At least it's 
not 1.22, looking at the bright side ...

Shahrukh