FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

Ben Gribaudo wrote:
> Do you have an 
> idea as to when 0.63 will be released as a stable Debian package?

No, sorry, we don't control that.  We release the code; how it's packaged
is up to the packagers.  

I have a lot of respect for the Debian project, and I can understand the
impulse to rely only on stable precompiled packages.  I think, however,
you need to make an exception for FreeTDS, at least for now.  Debian has
lately been laggardly in updating its FreeTDS package, ever since its
maintainer was kicked upstairs.  (Steve's the release engineer nowadays, I
believe.)  The 0.61 version you began with is sooo out of date we don't
even want to think about it.  

We've been releasing substantially improved code about once a year (and
point releases more often) for a few years now.  I would expect a 0.64
release in the next six months.  Each release has increased the
functionality and brought the libraries into closer conformance with the
specifications.  More important perhaps, from your perpective, is that the
first advice you'll typically get for any support issues is to upgrade at
least to the current release.  Oftentimes fixes are available only in the
development version.  

I think your options are: 1) Complain to Debian and wait, or 2) roll your
own.  

The good news: compiling FreeTDS on Debian is guaranteed to work, or your
money back.  And I understand creating a .deb file is no biggie, either.  

HTH.

--jkl