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0e1f616
(Get the code!)
Hi,
eBox packages in Jaunty are pretty old (0.12.x). Karmic packages are newer (1.3.5). I think another approach would be to backport them to Jaunty.
Having said that I would like to explain why eBox packages are a bit different to other packages in terms of release cycle.
We have been uploading eBox packages to Ubuntu following its normal release cycle. This has a potential serious drawback in terms of quality.
For eBox, an ubuntu release is, so to speak, its "upstream" as we provide a tool to configure the some of the services that run on top of the OS.
Quick example, there's an eBox module to take care of the samba service. During the release cycle of Jaunty, we uploaded an ebox-samba package before Feature Freeze which worked perfectly with the samba version shipped in Jaunty at that moment. The release cycle went on, and at some point, a new samba version was uploaded to the Jaunty repos via Feature Exception. This new version includes new syntax or new features that made the former configuration not to work. When this happens we have to try to detect this before release and provide a new package to fix it before the official release takes place, otherwise we have to go with SRUs.
The above samba example is real:
https:/
The fact that we upload packages before FF, and the services and stuff we depend on might perfectly change before release makes hard for us to deliver quality packages. You can't imagine how things can break overnight :)
We try to improve the process by having a lot of automatic tests run before release to find out if a new package has broken something.
In regards to which distro is officially supported by eBox platform. I would like to add that our "official" packages are released for Hardy. And not only the packages, you can download a custom CD installer from eBox platform website which is also based on Hardy. However, we also release packages for other Ubuntu releases such as Jaunty or Karmic. Releasing for other releases than LTS gives us a chance to try new features shipped with new package versions.
As we are targeting at server platforms, it makes a lot of sense for us to be based on an LTS release. We still have packages for Jaunty and Karmic though, but most of our users are using Hardy. That's where most of the testing takes place and where you can find the most stable packages. This is the reason why we recommend using Hardy packages for production boxes.