[homeomorphic]

But "stuff that was stable 4 months ago" is not a trivial case either. Suppose A version 1.1 was stable 4 months ago, but that the version of B that works with A 1.1 is horribly buggy still, and the stable version of B needs A 1.0. Do we upgrade A? I can imagine this becoming very tough to mange with 20k-30k packages. I hope Canonical can deal, but I do fear that the users will suffer.

[sp332]

If it's a library, it should be trivial to have the latest A 1.1 installed alongside older A 1.0 and stable B.

[homeomorphic]

With potentially hundreds of different packages playing the role of B, this could eat up a lot of manpower. What if the breakage is subtle and not well known upstream? While it could work, it sounds like something that would take a lot of QA work by Canonical.

[Avshalom]

That problem already exists, except currently there is generally a six month minimum before it gets resolved.

[homeomorphic]

> That problem already exists, except currently there is generally a six month minimum before it gets resolved.

I view it differently: Currently, the situation doesn't unexpectedly change for six months :-)