Changes for Wine on Debian

[Kyle Auble]

On 09/18/2015 01:34 PM, Jens Reyer wrote:
> Thanks for bringing this up at Debian directly, Kyle. Wine and Debian
> will win by being closer together and talking directly, here and there.
> (I'll try to answer more promptly *here* in the future, as well as I
> will help on the wiki here.)

I've started working on a Debian-specific download page for WineHQ 
(modeled on the Ubuntu one); I should be able to submit a patch for 
review before the weekend's up. After that, I'll be taking a break from 
Debian issues for a while, but I'll still be subscribed to the mailing list.

> Now, for all those wondering about the *usefulness of wine stable*: yes,
> please!

I'm not at Wineconf, but isn't Michael S. giving a talk about exactly 
this? I already mentioned my (not very weighty) opinion in another 
email, but I think we should be asking two distinct questions about 
wine's stable release:
1. Is there value in having a stable release?
2. Should it be decided on upstream and the same for everyone?

My view is "definitely yes" for #1 but "probably not" for #2. Especially 
with git and the mature infrastructure of the distros these days, it 
makes more sense to me to let each distro follow their own timeline - 
resync their git tree with WineHQ's, pick a dev release to fix as 
stable, create a branch there, then apply their custom patches and 
occasional upstream bug-fixes on top. I get the impression that's the 
approach many of the other flagship FOSS projects have settled into.

> I see the need and usefulness of wine-development for many people, and
> therefore I promised to maintain them in backports at least for Debian
> Jessie (i.e. probably the next 2 years).
> But this is only an additional service for users who have a reason to
> leave the stable path of their system. The occasional user is happy to
> know that Wine exists and that it works for an awesome lot of
> applications (and will do so for the next time, because neither the
> system or wine will change frequently). I'm sure they are the vast, but
> silent, majority.

I can see why WineHQ still recommends the dev release for most users at 
this point. I did have similar concerns to yours though, when I asked in 
my bug report if the "wine-development" package should be part of the 
normal Debian Stable repo. I wanted to ask if both people here at WineHQ 
and at Debian packaging could keep an eye out for relevant data over the 
next year or so.

Particularly, I wonder...
1. Will many questions from Debian Stable users about "wine-development" 
being outdated pop up on the Wine forums or IRC?
2. Will the install ratio for Backports vs. Stable "wine-development" 
grow significantly as Jessie ages (if popcon can distinguish between the 
two)?
3. Ditto for "wine" vs. "wine-development".

I'd interpret any of those things as a sign that the frozen version of 
"wine-development" on Stable might be redundant (and the 3rd that you're 
right about most Debian users being fine with the stable release). The 
Debian team could take that into account when deciding what to include 
in Stretch.

- Kyle