Re: [Tails-dev] about the maintenance of I2P in Tails

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Author: Kill Your TV
Date:  
To: tails-dev
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] about the maintenance of I2P in Tails
On Sun, 3 Nov 2013 13:13:45 +0000 (UTC)
adrelanos <adrelanos@???> wrote:

> (I am not a Tails developer.)
>
> Kill Your TV:
> > Would setting up a "Tails-only" distribution for the repository at
> > http://deb.i2p2.no be an acceptable way to handle freezes? This way
> > the Tails team and/or release manager couldn't be tripped up by
> > receiving unexpected and unwanted package upgrades beyond the Tails
> > freeze date. Of course, the packages in the "Tails-only"
> > distribution that I'm proposing would be the same as the ones
> > offered to the masses. The only way the "Tails distribution" would
> > differ from the Squeeze (and later Wheezy) distribution is that any
> > packages in this separate distribution would only be manually
> > updated when it's explicitly wanted. That way we (=I2P) can update
> > to a new release without potential disasters on the Tails side.
>
> I think this creates too much unnecessary maintenance and
> communication overhead.


As I see it, I would be the one handling the repository as well as the
maintenance of I2P in tails. Any sort of "communication overhead" would
consist of paying attention to Tails freezes (which a maintainer
_should_ do anyway). Like Tails, I do not want any bugs slipping in
that could have been avoided and I certainly don't want to be "that
guy" that introduced a bug.

What I proposed would only require updates/changes on the repository
side. As long as the packages don't change "that much" Tails would
automatically pull in the new release when
$TAILSRELEASESTATUS != "frozen".

> Instead of ongoing effort to communicate with Tails developers which
> version they prefer, just create version specific distributions, such
> as i2p-0.9.9 and i2p-0.9.10 and so forth. Then anyone who wants to
> pick an old/frozen versions just uses that repository and later moves
> on to a more recent frozen version.


It's not a matter of Tails "preferring" version X over version Y but
not wanting to have an unexpected update that hasn't been tested in
Tails being pulled in during a release freeze. At least that's how I
understand it.


> For example, The Tor Project currently offers these dists [1]:
> - tor-0.2.4.x-squeeze
> - tor-0.2.4.x-wheezy
> - tor-nightly-0.2.3.x-wheezy
> - tor-nightly-0.2.4.x-jessie


I didn't do that for I2P because old I2P versions don't receive ongoing
bugfixes where as Tor does.

> Then never update these distributions, since they are supposed to be
> frozen.
>
> From time to time after 5 (or X) releases, delete the oldest of the
> frozen distributions.
>
> Would that work for your and for Tails?


I could do it if Tails prefers, but whichever means is chosen to
handle freezes will still essentially be "tails specific" since most
users will typically want whatever the most recent version is.


> [1] http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/