Dose-outdated

What it means

We call a package p in version n outdated w.r.t. a certain repository R if: We attempt to take into account the fact that packages that stem from the same source package cannot be updated independently: if we find that two binary packages p1 and p2 have the same source package and have similar version numbers (that is, the same version up to epoch and up to a binNMU), then we assume that also in the future these two packages will advance in a synchronised way. This is an approximation since we do not take the possibility into account that packages may change their source package.

This means that package p can only be made installable by updating it in the repository (either by a sourceful or a recompilation upload).

How it is done

Outdated packages are found by running the dose-outdated tool from the dose-extra package (currently not automated).

Filing bugs

Currently I file bugs with severity=serious against such packages.

Detected bugs are marked there with user debian-qa@lists.debian.org and usertag edos-outdated.

Further Reading