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Why are PPA's set to only retain the latest version of the software? I ask because I just installed Blender 2.69 and it constantly crashes on me; I then decided to just install 2.68a but found that it is IMPOSSIBLE to install an older version of software using the Ubuntu software center.

I turned to possibly seeing if the PPA retained an older version but have found most PPA's remove older versions as they are designed to only offer the latest. How does this sound like a good idea? What if, for example, someone releases a version of their software that constantly crashes and the user wishes to get an older version but because the way PPA's are designed they cannot. Sounds familiar... To add insult to injury, I was easily able to role back Internet Explorer to version 9 on a machine at work today; that is just sad.

Braiam
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user210108
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2 Answers2

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A PPA is what it says it is a Personal Package Archive. Its a free service provided by Launchpad for people to distribute software and updates easily.

This also means that everybody can create and maintain a PPA. This could be

  • Private users who want their additional software packages accessible all in one place.
  • Developers who want to distribute their software when it is not yet in the official repositories.
  • Developers who want people to have access to their alpha or beta releases for testing.
  • Institutions who want to maintain related software collections.
  • Enthusiasts who want to share everything they like.

It could be even you to create and maintain a PPA.

Which software version, and what Ubunutu release version will be supported is entirely up to the maintainers of a PPA. The only restriction there is is that the software needs to build on a supported Ubuntu release before we can upload it to our PPA.

Therefore we always will have

  • PPAs that contain software versions identical to those in the repositories.
  • PPAs with newer stable versions build for older releases.
  • PPAs with supposedly stable recent sub-versions not otherwise published.
  • PPAs with bleeding edge unstable application releases.
  • PPAs with entirely untested or brand new software.

Often we will find several PPAs for both, stable, and unstable releases of a software. It is our own responsibility to choose the appropriate PPA. It is expected that we will suffer from bugs in the unstable testing or development releases of a software.

IRIE Shinsuke, the maintainer of the Blender PPA also provides a variety of other PPAs. In the Blender PPA we will at present also find an older version (2.4.). This may change any time if the maintainer decides to do so.

If you need an interim version to run you may have to download and compile this version by yourself.

Often but not always we will have some information on the contents of a PPA from their description on the PPAs page on Launchpad. For the Blender PPA it says e.g.:

Blender 2.6 package is (mostly) weekly trunk build. The build may be brought forward or be postponed when the trunk has some serious problem.

Community
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Takkat
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That's the way Debian APT repository list system work. If you install Ubuntu 13.04 now, the package list won't offer you the entire list of package versions:

apt-cache policy linux-generic
linux-generic:
  Installed: 3.8.0.32.50
  Candidate: 3.8.0.32.50
  Version table:
 *** 3.8.0.32.50 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring-security/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.8.0.19.35 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages

As you can see, my list jumps from 3.8.0.19.35 to 3.8.0.32.50, that is 23 minor versions of difference. If I had updated my package list since raring was released, I could assure you that more package versions would have shown.

BTW, PPA's are never "stable" to be meant for production, if you need something "stable" go for the main repositories. Unless you have a strong reason to use the PPA just stay away of it.

Braiam
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