Implement multi-release support for packages

PPAs are the best use case for this. The developers for the mythbuntu testing PPA have been doing multiple uploads for newer versions of packaging that go into development releases.

Right, Mario, that's understood. But this feature gets severally blocked on the fact that the same source cannot be built more than once in pool-based repositories.

We have to design something that would create Build request with a proper version suffix that would differentiate the binaries produced in the specified distributions.

IIRC the Debian implementation of this (if I'm remembering correctly that this is even supported at all in Debian) works by building it for the oldest listed distribution and then automatically copying the binaries to the others once they're built. That saves having to mess about with different binary versions.

This would only work for sources that build binaries that will actually work on all the distributions at once; however, in many of the situations where one might want to use this, that would be the case. I think that could be an acceptable restriction. Pau, Mario, what do you think?

Alternatively, one could look at the builds for the later distributions as a kind of binary-only rebuild, as discussed elsewhere. I believe the Debian convention for those is to append +b1 +b2 etc. to the binary versions.

I think binary only rebuilds would be a fine solution. There are
enough cases that using the same binaries on later releases wouldn't
work (think package transitions that have alternatives listed in
debian/control)

On 01/09/2009, Colin Watson <email address hidden> wrote:
> IIRC the Debian implementation of this (if I'm remembering correctly
> that this is even supported at all in Debian) works by building it for
> the oldest listed distribution and then automatically copying the
> binaries to the others once they're built. That saves having to mess
> about with different binary versions.
>
> This would only work for sources that build binaries that will actually
> work on all the distributions at once; however, in many of the
> situations where one might want to use this, that would be the case. I
> think that could be an acceptable restriction. Pau, Mario, what do you
> think?
>
> Alternatively, one could look at the builds for the later distributions
> as a kind of binary-only rebuild, as discussed elsewhere. I believe the
> Debian convention for those is to append +b1 +b2 etc. to the binary
> versions.
>
> --
> Implement multi-release support for packages
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/235064
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Mythbuntu, which is a direct subscriber.
>

--
Sent from my mobile device

Mario Limonciello
<email address hidden>

Note that Adam has posted some reasonable arguments against automatic binary rebuilds (+bN) in https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/soyuz/+bug/245594/comments/5

This feature request is very related to bug #245594 and any decision we make should satisfy both scenarios.

(Note that they are not necessarily dupes, in the case you feel tempted ...)

I'm marking this bug 'Confirmed', per a current discussion on ubuntu-devel. This would be very useful for PPA's, seems possible within Debian policy, and reasonable to do by building a package for some oldest release and simply copying the binary.

:-Dustin

We're actively discussing this one (and in fact just tried to estimate how much work it is). I'll post back here after we've made some decisions.

FWIW an automated copy-forward is probably the lowest hanging fruit, could be tied into the completion of a build. That said, this bug isn't in our current roadmaps - we'd love patches to implement it though!