User story:

I am a PureOS contributor. I want to get a non-urgent package in PureOS stable and maintain it indefinitely, so that it is reliably available to laptop and phone users.

(This could easily be in addition to an urgent package delivery that bypasses Debian.)

Suggested solution:

Add a new suite amber-backports to https://software.pureos.net/suites -- it should be a mirror of Debian's buster-backports.

Win condition:

On a laptop:

• Add amber-backports to /etc/apt/source.list
• Install a package that is available in Debian buster-backports but not PureOS amber

On a phone:

• Add amber-backports to /etc/apt/source.list
• Install a package that is available in Debian buster-backports but not PureOS amber

Original description (from an LDH development perspective):

The big picture is that we will now package LDH code for Debian testing (bullseye) and Debian stable-backports (buster). These updates will be picked up by PureOS next (byzantium) and PureOS stable-backports (amber-backports) respectively. We will probably continue this process indefinitely, so that PureOS always has the "latest" LDH packages.

So the new workflow will be:

source.puri.sm > Debian  > Debian           > PureOS           > apt -t stable-backports
                 testing   stable-backports   stable-backports   install ldh-package

From a development perspective, this means that LDH packages must work with dependencies as they appear in both Debian testing and stable. Shouldn't be too hard 🤞

From a PureOS perspective, this means that in addition to our existing suites we need a new suite, amber-backports that mirrors/matches buster-backports. Backported packages must be installed explicitly by the user, see https://wiki.debian.org/Backports for details. (In other words, everyday users won't suddenly receive hundreds of updates with varying stability promises.)

We will have to think how we will make backported LDH client packages easily available to everyday users. A default install seems sensible?

Immediate tasks

In the short term, Jonas will be backporting ldh-gui-suite to Debian stable-backports.

Once it lands there, or before, we need the amber-backports suite to be operational.

Exceptions

We will add packages to the backporting list as needs and resources allow. LDH server packages will likely take a very long time to arrive there, so we will consider alternate delivery mechanisms in the meanwhile.

In the case of GNOME Online Accounts (which has Librem One integration in progress), delivery is via the Librem 5 build process (source.puri.sm > build > PureOS stable) so that will be handled by the Librem 5 team.