On Fri, 17 Nov 2006, Lars Rupp wrote:
Am Do 16.11.2006 19:49 schrieb Boyd Lynn Gerber
: I know that the SUSE developers do not always notice that packages have newer versions.
That could be true for FACTORY - not for released products ;-)
Yes, I should have said that factory is where the feature requests end up being updated. I reported 5 or 6 packages that I use often that had not been updated in a long time. They have all been updated to the latest released version prior to the feature freeze for 10.2. I am very pleased with how responsive the SUSE developers have been.
I not that the one's I have add to bugzilla as a feature request have all been updated. Maybe someon should file a bug feature request. You'll not get Version Upgrades for a released product directly over the SUSE update channel (ok: we have some exeptions). SUSE has a strict policy for released products: no version upgrades, only updates for the version released with the distribution.
The "trick" behind it: sometimes developers decide to add new features and perhaps some API changes to new versions. If you have installed a programm on your system and SUSE will deliver a upgrade - perhaps afterwards neither your programm nor any other programm linked against it will execute... Ask people who decided to upgrade their KDE version: sometimes it works, sometimes not.
So the answer is: yes, you can _upgrade_ - but you should know that your system can be unstable if something happens with the newer programm version. If you just _update_, everything should work as expected - and even better after the update.
The SUSE developers spend a lot of time fixing old versions of a programm. Remember: the programms (and their version numbers!) on SLES10 have seven years support. So perhaps in seven years, a user who has updated his system every day will just have subversion 1.3.1 on his plattform - but this version should be very "stable" then. ;-)
I agree totally. The upgrade via the build service is at your own risk.
But I have been very pleased with how well they have worked. I use them
often.
Thanks,
--
Boyd Gerber