Hi,
Now that we have a new Dovecot v2.3 release, I've created a new Xi builder that follows the git master branch to automatically produce Debian packages for the future Dovecot v2.4. The existing v2.3 repository now follows the master-2.3 branch, meaning that this will only follow developments/fixes ported to the v2.3 stable release series. This was already true for the v2.2 oldstable packages.
All repositories now finally have the capability of updating version numbers automatically based on releases (as it used to be before we switched to git). This operates a little different than before though: the normal (alpha) repositories produce packages with a version that has an "~alpha" suffix. The base version represents the *next* release version, rather than the current as it was before. So, if the last Dovecot release was 2.3.0, Xi will release packages with version 2.3.1~alpha0, which is the version we're working towards.
Another development is that the builders for v2.2 and v2.3 also follow the release-2.x.y branches once these are created. These branches are forked from the respective master-2.x branch once the first release candidate for a release is to be created, so that packages produced in this stream will follow those developments, including the actual release (and any small patch releases that may follow). Unlike the alpha packages, rc packages have a base version that matches the release version. Packages for the release branches are output to separate repository. While e.g. the repository for automatic packages for Debian stable is called "stable-auto", the release branch packages are published to a repository called "stable-rc-auto". The /etc/apt/sources.list line for that would look as follows:
deb http://xi.dovecot.fi/debian/ stable-rc-auto/dovecot-2.3 main
Keep in mind that, while the rc repositories will have a little more stability, these are still produced fully automatically without any regular human supervision. Using these for production systems is therefore not recommended. Also, since this is a new feature, these repositories are still to be considered experimental.
IMPORTANT: Much of this work was prepared and tested earlier in the http://xi.dovecot.fi/debian.new repository. This repository is now shut down and will not be updated anymore. Therefore, all of you who have switched to that repository must switch back to the normal one.
As you know, Dovecot now operates a repository with v2.3 packages for the community edition. Unlike Xi, the production of these packages is triggered manually and the resulting packages are suitable for production systems. Xi is still the repository to use if you wish to follow very recent developments (within the hour!) for testing purposes.
Regards,
Stephan.