Package: debian-handbook Version: 6.0+20120509 Severity: normal Hi!
A user in #debian just pointed out that Example 6.1 (and following) of the Debian Administrator's Handbook was using "stable" rather than "squeeze" in its examples for the sources.list file. We've only just (finally!) got rid of these from sources.list(5) and having a new source recommending this isn't great. The problem is, of course, that upgrading from oldstable→stable is no longer just a simple matter of "apt-get dist-upgrade" with most releases having some extra hurdles such as upgrading kernel and udev then rebooting then upgrading the rest of the system -- while you can sometimes get away without doing these extra steps, it's one of those "you get to keep all the pieces when it breaks" moments and the release notes only include those steps because significant and difficult-to-fix breakage has been reported in upgrading tests. Soon after a stable release, #debian sees people who have accidentally made mixed oldstable+stable systems or end up with very confused package management systems trying to install one or two new packages into their oldstable machine without having done the full upgrade. Since we can pretty much guarantee that all the versioned dependencies won't be of perfect tightness to ensure that the mixed system works, we just have to accept that such partial upgrades are not likely to be happily functioning systems. We really need to do our best in *all* documentation published to avoid mixed systems like this. There is more discussion on this in #531492 which led to sources.list(5) finally being fixed for squeeze. It would be nice if we could have similar set of fixes for the debian-handbook since it has a lot of people looking at it. thanks -- and thanks for putting together so much documentation for users cheers Stuart -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
