bzr should be updated in past Ubuntu releases through SRU or backport

[Martin Pool]

Newer bzr releases are much better than those shipped in past supported Ubuntu releases, with regard to functionality, bug fixes, performance (especially on the network) and also ability to read new formats.

See <http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=bzr> for the current contents.

We can ask for a newer version to be made available in the -update repositories through following the <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates> or <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports> processes.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

The important thing is to get updates into the immediately prior release (currently Intrepid) and into the current stable release (currently Hardy), and of course the current development release. Other releases are still in support but probably less commonly used.

See this thread <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/2008q3/044683.html> "Bazaar 1.6 in Hardy" for previous discussion of upgrades, and also <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/2009q1/052421.html>

From my reading of the SRU and backport definitions, this would be considerably stretching the normal definition of an SRU, which is that it should have a reasonably minimal patch targetted at particular important bugs.

Although developers make minimal fixes for particular bugs, in the Bazaar team we generally only merge them into the next upcoming release, or at most a point update of the immediately previous release. Doing a minimal backported fix for every bugfix would be substantially more work, and doing a minimal patch to support new formats or rpcs would be infeasible.

In intrepid, intrepid-backports can be installed through the Software Sources dlalog, ie without needing to manually edit /etc/apt/sources.list or configure a PPA. However they are described there as "Unsupported updates" which may be disconcerting to some users.

The package would also available for manual installation (eg through gdebi) from packages.ubuntu.com.

I think it makes sense to at least begin with a backport before considering an SRU.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

We have bug 302987, open for some time, asking for a backport, apparently idle at the moment. As mentioned there, there is the complication of also needing to backport all the related packages such as bzrtools.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

our first SRU (2.0.2 into karmic-updates) is now done for <https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bzr/+bug/437626>

<https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/jaunty-backports/+bug/302987> asks for a backport and has not been done yet as far as I can see.

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

This is still something we need to do in Bazaar, but not particularly worth keeping open as a bug against bzr.