Re: Zsh on Debian is beginning to rot

[Axel Beckert <abe@deuxchevaux.org>]

Hi,

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 01:10:50PM +0200, Mark van Dijk wrote:
> Subject: Zsh on Debian is beginning to rot

Ehm, do you really know what you're talking about?

> Take a look at this output of my Debian Squeeze box:
> 
> Package: zsh
> Version: 4.3.10-14

Squeeze is about 1.5 years old, Squeeze's feature freeze was in the
beginning of August 2010 and zsh 4.3.10 was the uptodate zsh
developement (!) release back then.

Do you really know how Linux distributions in general and Debian in
specific works? I don't think so.

> Package: zsh-beta
> Version: 4.3.10-dev-1+20100720-1

Compare the freeze date with the date in the version number: Clint
upload an uptodate snapshot just two weeks before the freeze for
Squeeze.

> Debian sid is not much better - version 4.3.17.

Which is the second last release of zsh and the last developement
release of zsh before the freeze for Wheezy. Nothing wrong here
either.

As Frank already pointed out, there is an uptodate 5.0.0 package
(actually in its second incarnation) in Debian Experimental. It's in
Experimental and not Sid because of the freeze for Wheezy. Please read
http://www.debian.org/devel/testing if you don't understand why it
works that way and not differently.

> I wonder why it's been so long since Zsh has had a decent upgrade on
> Debian.

Because it will never happen after a stable release has happened and
it usually doesn't happen after a feature freeze either. That's why
it's called "feature freeze" and "stable". No more changes which could
break something. Stable APIs and ABIs. That's what users can rely on.

> Is there no package maintainer?

There is actually a team of four maintainers plus several very active
and helpful regular bug reports -- which btw. all read this mailing
list, too. All in all a very healthy maintainer infrastructure of
which many packages can only dream of.

> Is there a semi or non-official Zsh repository for Debian?

We see no need for that. You can use the Debian Experimental
repository if you want to stay on bleeding edge stuff during the
freeze for the next Debian stable release.

There is though the Jenkins repository[1] of the Debian Zsh Packaging
Team which automatically builds packages after each push from a team
member. Those packages are really bleeding edge, but be aware that
those packages may be broken, too. Use at your risk and don't whine if
it breaks your box. (Bug reports welcome, though. ;-)

> Of course (imho) the most convenient solution would be if debian
> just would replace all the zsh packages in stable, testing and
> unstable with a single zsh package. Version 5.

Ok, this shows that you really have _NO_ idea how Debian or most other
Linux distributions work. Go and do your homework before complaining.
See the according question[2] in FAQ for a start. (Or use a rolling
release based Linux distribution instead in case you dislike the idea
of _stable_ _releases_.)

> Hopefully someone's reading this who is able to pull some strings...

Yeah, the strings we pulled are those in our e-mail client so that 
two e-mails to the zsh users mailing list were written.

Footnotes:

  [1] http://jenkins.grml.org/job/zsh-source/
  [2] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-getting.en.html#s-updatestable

		Kind regards, Axel
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