[php-maint] Backport requirements exception for some packages (php5)

[Alexander Wirt]

On Mon, 16 Dec 2013, Ondřej Surý wrote:

> Hi Alexander,
> 
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013, at 13:42, Alexander Wirt wrote:
> > At the moment, I don't think we will accept it. Providing PHP in backports
> > was always troublesome, as a lot of applications just stop to work with
> > newer versions.
> 
> Care to provide the evidence? AFAIK we never had a PHP in backports. I
> would agree with you it this request came from some third party, but
> here you have PHP packages provided and supported by the PHP Debian
> team.
php5.5 will make several php based applications incompatible to the php in
bpo, wont't it?

> 
> > And especially in that case it is a problem. If we want to keep
> > with the 5.4.x upload currently sitting in NEW we will end with an
> > unsupported branch (testing already has 5.5.x), which is imho not
> > acceptable.
> 
> Why? The upstream release process aims to keep the compatibility in the
> 5.4.x branch and the Debian packagers are willing to support the 5.4.x
> branch in the backports. Also the external services (dotdeb.org for
> Debian, my PPAs for Ubuntu) proves that people are hungry to have latest
> PHP running and I don't really see a reason why we can't provide that
> from within the Debian infrastructure.
And? backports come from testing. And you plan to support php5.4.x from
testing for all the time?

> So I am kindly asking you to step out of the box and reconsider this
> again, since we promise to support the version in the backports with our
> PHP Debian team hats.
tbh that is not the problem of the backports ftpmasters. We had the same game
during squeeze and lenny.

Alex