systemd-stable and Debian's systemd release strategy

[tok]

Hi,

This is not meant as blame but I sincerely would like to understand the mechanisms/approach and apparent complexities behind it: I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on Debian's strategy of releasing systemd packages?

Commendably, the systemd project maintains a dedicated repository (systemd-stable) for stable branches with backported patches available to all distros, but apparently the Debian project is not leveraging this to its advantage:

Current version in Debian stable:
247.3-7+deb11u1 (March 2022)
Latest version of this major release in systemd-stable:
247.13 (Dec 2022, 10 minor versions ahead)

Current version in Debian backports:
251.3-1~bpo11+1 (Aug 2022)
Latest version of this major release in systemd-stable:
251.10 (Dec 2022, 7 minor versions ahead)


What is the reason for this gap? I understand package maintaining is a challenging task, especially for something complex like systemd. But would the systemd-stable repo not provide already a lot of groundwork (as in: backporting bugfixes) for this, to reduce the effort?

Thanks for insights, regards,
tok