Re: compiling

[Graham Percival]

Marijn Schouten (hkBst) wrote:
> > Yeah.  For example, Debian _still_ doesn't have guile-1.8.2 or higher. 
> > Not even in the unstable branch!  I think this was released about a year
> > ago.  :(
> >     
>
> Actually
> 1.8.2 was released 2007-07-16
>   
I feel appropriately embarrassed -- I noticed a "2006" in the date of a 
bugreport on guile-1.8, and jumped to conclusions.  The actual date was 
28 Dec 2006, so that's half a year.  (wishlist request for the rational 
fractions patch)

More importantly, 1.8.2 was packaged on 25 Aug 2007!  I think I was 
looking for guile two weeks ago, so I missed it barely.

> > With good reason, I think -- once we find a bug in the underlying
> > libraries, it doesn't make sense to try to work around that bug in our
> > own code.  But that does mean that we have to wait a year (or more)
> > before those underlying projects release new versions and get packaged
> > for major distributions.
> >     
>
> Are there really distributions that don't apply patches for bugfixes to their
> packages (especially if they are already accepted upstream)? If it takes more
> than a year it is probably a sign that certain packages aren't maintained
> (much) due to staffing needs going unfulfilled.
>   
Yes, there are distributions with slow bugfix patches; and staffing 
needs are short everywhere.  I really didn't mean to sound ungrateful in 
my previous email; I'm very aware that most packagers are volunteers, 
and I'm very appreciative of their work.

Cheers,
- Graham