apt, python-apt: Upstream versioning scheme LTS SRUs

The APT developers (https://launchpad.net/~deity) maintain upstream stable branches for LTS releases of Ubuntu. These will be uploaded to LTS releases using upstream version numbers and no ubuntu downstream version components. These branches are shared with other downstreams like OpenEmbedded, however they are not influenced by other downstream needs.

The APT release management ensures that there is no conflict in versioning between Debian and Ubuntu uploads. There is only one versioned branch with one designated target release.

QA process

In addition to normal Ubuntu QA process after the upload, each upstream release (each push to the git branch really) undergoes a dedicated CI pipeline that runs the test suite as both root and a normal user whereas the autopkgtests only cover the root portion.

Requesting the SRU

SRUs will follow the normal SRU procedure but may use upstream versions if uploaded by the https://launchpad.net/~deity team.

Other developers are strongly recommended to deliver patches to the upstream APT project and get an upstream APT release instead of releasing uploads themselves to ensure validation by APT developers and the CI. Please ping juliank if you need a patch!

Approvals

On behalf of the SRU team, I'm not approving this because I'm not sure the approach to versioning is the right way to do things in the long term. In the short term, this is apparently how its been done for quite a while now, so we can carry on for the moment. No policy exception is required for apt and this document doesn't represent one - this page just serves to explain the status quo to make future SRU reviews easier.

See the IRC discussion for details.

-- racb 2024-02-15 13:37:35