On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:28:24 +0100
Markos Chandras <hwoar...@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Wow! That is something we actively encourage people to avoid. Mixed
> systems are totally
> unsupported and I am sure quite a few bugs are closed as invalid when
> a mixed system is detected.
Mixing stable and testing is precisely what arch teams (hopefully) do in
testing and stabilising: building and running new software on a known
to be stable platform in order to merge the new software into the
stable branch (or not).
Mixing stable and testing is precisely what package
maintainers (hopefully) do when committing new versions: building and
running new software on a known to be stable platform on the premise
that the new software is likely to be merged into the stable branch
(before the platform changes too much).
Mixing stable and testing is what triggers users to file useful
bug reports about incompatibilities between new software and stable
(reverse) dependencies.
Cases where reporting bugs about mixing stable and testing is (likely)
invalid is when unmasking one package in the unstable branch causes
(reverse) dependency resolution issues with another package in the
stable branch (since users should know how to resolve those - there is
generally no bug for maintainers to fix).
There is a lot more to it than this, of course. I'm just pointing out
some of the obvious scenarios in which mixing stable and testing should
be encouraged.
jer
