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I will note that Mandriva, at least, continually updates the version of OpenLDAP they ship, unlike most distributions, so it definitely isn't all. And my point is, Red Hat could do better, and I'd like to see them do better. I'd like to see Debian/Ubuntu do better too. I.e., this isn't specific to Red Hat, but the discussion here is about Red Hat, and what it can do. I discuss Debian and what it can do better with the Debian devs on their openldap dev list.

Then I'd like to hear what Jan and the other Red Hat OpenLDAP maintainers have to say.

As for Fedora, I usualy rebase the package immediately when the new upstream version is available. And I do it in the stable and newer releases (for today it would be stable F17, alpha F18, and Rawhide). And if there is a problem in older Fedora, I just pick the patch.

So we are definitelly not behind with Fedora -- the last submitted updates can be found here: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/search/openldap

As for RHEL it is more complicated, the rebases are allowed rarely. We cannot afford any API/ABI breakage and regressions. and I can imagine that a new feature in OpenLDAP changes the current behavior or affects some other component.

I can remind a bug which appeared after rebase to 2.4.31 in Fedora and we do not want to cause a similar problems in RHEL: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=771484 http://www.openldap.org/its/index.cgi?findid=7167

I would like to see newer OpenLDAP in RHEL because it would be easier for me to maintain it. But I'm not sure if the advantages will outweight the disadvantages and if our customers will benefit from it rather than be forced to deal with new problems.

Ok. One thing I do with Debian is help triage issues that are reported there with the upstream ITS system if the issues do not appear to be due to the usage of an old version. If there is a simple way to do that with Red Hat, I could help there as well.

When there is a new bug report, I usualy try to reproduce with the package from RHEL or Fedora. And then with the newest OpenLDAP from git master. If I'm able to reproduce, I always create a report in your ITS.

Jan