will Armory remain backwards compatible for offline transaction signing?

[spinoff]

Hi, I'm looking into creating a live-USB with Armory on it to sign transactions offline. My question is: will I ever have to upgrade the Armory version on it? i.e. is Armory backwards compatible in this sense. And if not, what's the safest upgrade procedure? Downloading .tar.gz sources of Armory and dependencies and compiling on the offline system?

I see this could be a long-term hassle; say I install a debian stable now, and in ten years I want to get my bitcoins. If I have to upgrade Armory I'll have 10 years of new library versions to compile.... without dependecy resolution because all is being done offline

As a side note, which distribution do you recommend?

[Automatic]

Complex issue, as, for whatever reason there may be a required/recommended update for the offline computers, although, currently, it is fully backwards compatible back to V.6 and should remain that way for awhile (So I've read), the transaction itself is the standard bitcoind 'rawtransaction' format, so, unless bitcoind updates, it should stay the same, but, you know what they say about assuming.

For reference, here is the bitcoind source of the decoderawtransaction (I think, in all honesty, I didn't read it all):-
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/rpcrawtransaction.cpp

And, for more proof of the matter, if you take an armory transaction, then just paste it into bitcoind with getrawtransaction, it'll tell you your transaction:-

[goatpig]

Offline signing is done by passing raw unsigned transactions to the offline machine. As long as the current transaction format remains valid in the blockchain, you wont have any trouble on that front. Keep in mind that you have to stick to those transaction formats supported by the version of Armory you are running, i.e. dont try to pass a multisig transaction or use compressed keys with a version of Armory that doesnt support those.

[etotheipi]

You can use 0.60-alpha on the offline computer if you want... it will still work, even if you're running 0.90-beta online.  The only downside is that you won't get any of the new backup features.  And when we finally finish the new wallet format and implement multi-sig, we're going to have to change the message format for doing offline transactions.  At that point you'll have to upgrade the offline computer if you upgrade the online computer, but the old wallets will still work (rather, there will be a migrate function).

As for upgrading the offline computer: we have "offline bundles" for the offline computers so installing is super simple.  If you want to compile from source, you can install the dependencies once on the offline computer and you should be in good shape.  Very occasionally a new dependency is added, but I think that's only happened 2 times in the last 2 years.