The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Cefiar <address@concealed>]

Etch, the next version of Debian, has now frozen. See 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/12/msg00004.html for 
details.

Currently, it has sympa version 4.1.5 (with some patches) - way way old!

Because of the freeze policy, no new versions of sympa will end up in Etch.

I think the sympa team and the Debian maintainer need to figure out what is 
going to be done here.

Possibly:
 Since nothing depends on sympa, you could "possibly" push a release into 
Etch, but you need to talk to the Debian release team and the maintainer of 
the Debian package. It's going to be an uphill battle, as they'll not want to 
allow it in  as they try to have a no exceptions policy. An arguement that 
(to me) makes the most sense is that it's going to be HORRIBLE to support 
such an old version (from a security standpoint). The details of who to talk 
to are in the above freeze notification, and at the source package page for 
sympa (see http://packages.debian.org/testing/source/sympa for that).

The other option is probably easier though:
 Since nothing depends on sympa, it should be easy to get the package removed 
from Debian, at least for the Etch release.

Yes, you heard right. I'm suggesting that the package gets removed. The old 
package is doing nothing for sympa, and in fact potentially causing more 
problems for sympa's reputation (and workload answering questions related to 
old versions) than anything.

A good way to handle this is to host a Debian package repository on the 
sympa.org servers with packages for Debian. It's a simple matter for anyone 
who wants to host a sympa install on a Debian machine to add the appropriate 
line to their sources.list for a new repository, and it means that 
(hopefully) it will be more up to date than the Debian packages. It's not 
that hard to build packages (as long as you have an appropriate box to build 
on) or to host a repository (it's just a set of files).

Anyway, I've put forth my comment. I personally think this is something that 
needs definite consideration, as one of the responses people put forward on 
the survey was to update the Debian package, so it definitely appeals to 
people.

BTW: Ubuntu, being based on Debian, is also a prime target for such a 
package, 
as are any of the other systems based on Debian's packaging system. Currently 
Ubuntu pull their package from Debian. It'd be nice if a later version of 
sympa ended up in their security supported list of packages as well, as they 
too are back in the 4.1.5 days (plus, if I'm not mistaken, they don't offer 
security support on the package as it's in "Universe" - their package section 
for programs that are compiled against Ubuntu and that you can install, but 
should not expect security releases for).

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - address@concealed