Re: [Evolution-hackers] bug fixing in stable 2.22.x branch

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 18:41 +0200, Patrick Ohly wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a question primarily to the maintainers of the various Linux
> distributions which include Evolution 2.22.x (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Debian
> Lenny), but also to the Evolution hackers: the latest stable release,
> 2.22.3.1, still contains bugs. There are different ways to deal with
> this:
>      1. Evolution upstream continues to apply bug fixes to the 2.22.x as
>         long as important distributions use that.
>      2. Maintainers of packages apply patches locally, without or with
>         help by Evolution upstream. Upstream could help with bug
>         tracking.
> 
> What's the current practice? It seems that upstream has already stopped
> updating the 2.22 branch and bug fixes are only applied to trunk [1].

Evolution follows the GNOME development schedule [1] which allows for
three updates to a stable release per six-month development cycle.
Generally thereafter, all work is concentrated on trunk in preparation
for the next stable release (2.24 for this cycle, due in late
September).

Distros are free to make additional changes to their packages beyond the
third stable update (backporting patches, fixing security issues, etc.).

I'm not sure the GNOME release team _prohibits_ making additional stable
updates beyond the third scheduled point release, but it's generally not
done given our limited manpower.

Matthew Barnes

[1] http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentythree/