Feasibility: maintaining side-by-side Godot releases in PureOS stable
Problem statement
User story: I am a Godot game developer. I want to build my game against the latest stable, maintained version of Godot, so that I can benefit from the latest game engine features.
Issue #4 has the requirement "Flossy Gnu must adapt to the dependencies present in PureOS stable."
Thus PureOS amber will remain at Godot 3.0.x for the forseeable future. Developers releasing games to PureOS stable won't be able to use Godot 3.2 or (soon) Godot 4.0.
Suggested solution
Using the latest and shiniest thing is never strictly required, but is very nice to have. At the same time, dropping older Godot versions from the repos renders all games dependent on them impossible to install/play.
Folk wisdom states that Godot is stable at the minor version level. e.g. 3.0.x is frozen apart from bug fixes, and all games developed with 3.0.0. should run with 3.0.999. Games developed with 3.1.0 will not run.
Thus, we could release new Godot versions side-by-side in PureOS. Similar to how major Python versions are supported side-by-side.
apt install godot-3.0
apt install godot-3.2
apt install godot-4.0
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Is this technically possible? i.e. Godot 3.2 doesn't rely on dependencies/versions not present in PureOS stable?
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If possible, what commitment is required for a given Godot release. Bug and security fixes only. No new features. Anything else?
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When do we drop an old Godot release? (Presumably when upstream stop maintaining it.)
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Anything else?