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I'm new to Arch and perhaps this question has been asked hunderd of times before but I culdn't find an answer even in the official Arch documentation like this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Compared_to_Other_Distributions

Arch it's a rolling release distro. Ths is clear to me. But, what does exaclty happens when a new version of a component is released? Let's use the kernel as an example:
A new stable kernel is available at www.kernel.org (e.g. 3.12.8). Is this kernel packaged as it is and pushed to Arch repos or:

  1. is there any QA loop (testing) before pushing a package to repo?
  2. are some patches applied?

In arch if I type uname -r, I get 3.12.8-1. So does -1 means any customization / patches?

Timo
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lviggiani
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2 Answers2

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  1. For upgrades where the package is not likely to break system boot, there is likely not much QA before the package is upgraded other than checking it builds and runs correctly. It is generally expected that upstream does the testing rather than the distribution.
  2. Arch Linux does not typically apply patches to upstream except to fix critical bugs. See The Arch Way, especially the parts about simplicity.
  3. uname -r prints the kernel version, which in Arch also contains the release number (known as pkgrel in PKGBUILDs, see here). It doesn't indicate a patchlevel, necessarily. From the linked page:

This value allows users to differentiate between consecutive builds of the same version of a package. When a new package version is first released, the release number starts at 1. As fixes and optimizations are made to the PKGBUILD file, the package will be re-released and the release number will increment by 1. When a new version of the package comes out, the release number resets to 1.

Chris Down
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The QA level is depend on Repo type.

Core has fairly strict quality requirements. Developers/users need to signoff on updates before package updates are accepted. For packages with low usage, a reasonable exposure is enough: informing people about update, requesting signoffs, keeping in testing up to a week depending on the severity of the change, lack of outstanding bug reports, along with the implicit signoff of the package maintainer.

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Repositories and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:CoreSignoffs

user57605
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