Re: Update Manager and Core Utils

[C de-Avillez]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:53:53 -0700
Jan-Pawel Wrozstinski <address@hidden> wrote:

>   I did a little more digging and found that coreutils (is? are?)
> supported by the Synaptic Package Manager.  It reports the current
> version as matching the latest version, viz:  6.10-6ubuntu1
> 

OK. You are running Ubuntu, either Intrepid (8.04) or Jaunty (8.10).
Both of them use coreutils 6.10-6ubuntu1. This is the current version
of coreutils for these Ubuntu versions, and they will *NOT* be upgraded
to coreutils v8.*. Although some times we do backport new versions of a
package, there must be a clear case of need. This clear case is not
present here, unfortunately. Even more, coreutils is a core package,
and there may be other impacts.

>    I ran a reinstallation anyway; no change.  tail --help still shows
> what I wrote before, and tail --version shows 6.10

Yes. See above.

>    I'm  kind  of  new to this neighborhood; I need a little
> guidance.  If coreutils is supposed to be at version 8 but is
> actually only at 6 and not getting upgraded, to whom should this be
> reported?  (And would it be naíve of me to think no-one has noticed
> it before and I should be the one to report it?)

This list, indeed, is not the correct place: this is coreutils
development/bugs, a.k.a. "upstream" for Ubuntu and other Linux
distributions.

For *Ubuntu* issues, you can go to:

 * https://ubuntuforums.org (the official Ubuntu forums)
 * https://answers.launchpad.net, (support questions, *not* package
   bugs)
 * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu (package bugs, *not* support
   questions)

But I can tell you, right now, that we will probably not upgrade
coreutils to version 8 on already-published versions of Ubuntu.
You can always build it yourself, though.

I am considering publishing an *unsupported* version of coreutils, and
publishing on my PPA for Ubuntu. But -- and this is an extremely
important 'but'-- you should be aware that there are *always* a risk on
using up-to-date, non-official, packages, on an older version. If you
use them, you will not be able to open bugs on Ubuntu.

Finally, even coreutils 8.0 may not be put available for the new Ubuntu
version -- Karmic, 9.10. It is too late in the cycle to test V8, and
put it in (we are releasing 9.10 by end-of-month).

Chhers,

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