> Problems with unstable are mostly in dependencies and pre/postinst > scripts, and other minor packaging errors. Of course, if software you > use a lot has a version in unstable that is actually an alpha or beta > version, but a stable version is in woody, then you might not want to > run all unstable.
i'll second this. i've tracked unstable for years. i pay pretty close attention to what apt says it's going to do (like a few months ago i tried to upgrade apache and it wanted to remove apt ... not good) but i've rarely had a problem that i can't fix in 5-10 minutes. almost always it's just package ordering problems not being taken care of quite right. that being said i'm pretty careful on my server (where a 15 minute outage is a big deal), but on my laptop it's no biggie. > What I do is run woody, but with the unstable repositories in my > sources.list, and APT::Default-Release "testing"; in my apt.conf. > (see apt_preferences(5), etc.) This way, apt-get install package gets > the package from woody, unless it only exists in unstable. apt-get > install package/unstable gets the unstable version. apt-get -t > unstable lets apt upgrade the dependencies to their unstable version > if necessary. this is really cool. guess it's been a while since i read the apt man page! i've wanted this for so .... long ... thanks! adam.
