[Gdal-dev] Debian gdal stuck at 1.2.6?

[Ben Discoe]

I have a Debian box (Ubuntu 5.10) and would love to release my
gdal-depdendent software as a .deb installer, but (as i understand it) this
in turn requires GDAL to have a current .deb, so that the dependencies can
be resolved in a package manager.  In the Ubuntu package manager, and in the
Debian repository pointed to from the GDAL site, there is only GDAL version
1.2.6, now more than a year old.

How can this be brought up to the latest GDAL version?  Does it require much
work from somebody Debian-savvy, or is it easy?

Thanks,
Ben