[Tile-serving] Update policy of ppa packages linked from switch2osm.org

[Kai Krueger]

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what people think the best policy is for how to handle
updates in the PPA [1] which is linked to from switch2osm.org.

So far the policy has mostly been: Keep the packages up-to-date for
unreleased Ubuntu versions, but then no longer update them once Ubuntu
has been released, unless they effect real bugs. I.e. basically I have
stuck to the freeze policy of Ubuntu. As these packages are used in
production servers, I'd rather err on the safe side and not update the
packages unless necessary to reduce the risks of new bugs getting
introduced.

However for Ubuntu 12.04LTS these packages are therefore nearly a year
old by now and by the time Ubuntu releases the next LTS they might be
close to two years (if there aren't any significant bugs found requiring
further updates).

Lately I have seen an increasing number of "support requests" on irc
trying to use functionality (like higher zoom leves than z18) that is
available in the latest source code, but not yet in the old packages in
the ppa, which has made me wonder if the above policy is necessarily the
best.

As an alternative, I have created a new PPA called osm-unstable [2],
which I try to keep more up-to-date. These aren't nightly builds or in
anyway automated builds. I still try and choose times to update those
packages where the development is slower and hopefully more stable, but
they are updated much more frequently than the main ones.

Any thoughts of if this is the best approach?


[1] https://launchpad.net/~kakrueger/+archive/openstreetmap
[2]
https://launchpad.net/~kakrueger/+archive/osm-unstable