Comment 2 for bug 297007

Firstly, the submitter's numbers are wrong - Intrepid ships with 1.9.1, not 1.2.1. I put it there myself.

Secondly, I'm fairly sure that Mono is excluded from the official backport process, due to being a "key framework" and as such the risk of regressions in dependent applications is considered too great. I've been packaging Mono backports unofficially for years, for LTS releases, though.

As for 2.0.1... Well, yes, but there are procedures for these things. Firstly, Mono is a major effort for packagers - 9 source packages , about a hundred binary packages, and every release introduces new things to check. the QA effort required is massive.

As such, collaboration is key - and with Jaunty, all Mono packaging work will be done with greater teamwork between Ubuntu & Debian than ever. 2.0.1 will be landing in the Debian Experimental repository whenever the FTP-Master team decide to bless it enough to migrate from the NEW queue. There are a LOT of other changes coming at the packager level, which take time, effort, and work on about another 50-100 packages. These will be worked on as time allows. Additionally, Mono 2.2 is beginning to be leaked to packagers, for testing purposes (I already have a mono-basic 2.2 package for experimentation prepared).

Short version: "soon, sooner if you help"