[CoLoCo] Gutsy vs RHFC

[David L. Willson]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:37:16 -0600, Collins Richey wrote
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:25 PM, NICK VERBECK <nerdynick at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As I found out Friday the current Red Hat Enterprise PHP 5
> > package is 5.1.6. Which is 2 yrs old and full of security holes. Where
> > Ubuntu packs 5.2.6 which is new as of May and is the last stable
> > release from PHP/Zend.
> >
> 
> Just an FYI. You can't rely on version numbers with RHEL (or CentOS if
> you prefer the freebie version). Red Hat establish a base release,
> then continue to patch that version with bug and security fixes. The
> RH 5.1.6 may be newer than you think. Not that it will ever be as up
> to date as a new Ubuntu release.

Unless I'm mistaken, that is the case with most distributions, including Ubuntu.  Full
or incremental version-upgrades for programs don't go into the repositories, but
bug-fixes and security-patches do.  For the example in question, PHP 5.2 won't ever be
available in the yum or apt repo's for a distro that originally shipped with 5.1, only
the security and bug fixes for 5.1 will be.  This is to prevent potential breakage
caused by upgraded versions of pre-existing functions, or in the case of major-number
upgrades, dropped or replaced functions.  This seems to be the way of it, but someone
smart will correct me if I'm wrong.