On Sun 15 Jan 06, 11:30 PM, Rick Moen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Quoting Bob Scofield ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > > Here's another question. I got the feeling from a recent post that > > Ken Bloom uses unstable. Do others use unstable? Why would one > > choose unstable over testing? > > The nightmare of everyone who considers tracking "unstable" is roughly > as follows: > > 1. The maintainer of Debian's glibc package gets good and drunk on a > Friday night, completes a software revision, crypto-signs it, and sends > it up to the ftp-master machine. The ftp-master scripts verify the > signature against the master keyring, pick it up and send it off to the > build hosts, which then populate it into the "unstable" tree in the > package mirrors. > > 2. At noon Saturday, the maintainer wakes up, has coffee, gets an > icepack, and starts remembering what on earth he did the previous day. > At 2 pm, he posts to debian-devel saying "Warning: Do _not_ get the > current unstable package glibc-2.3.foo. It's broken. Will have new > package up imminently." He also goes onto the #debian and #debian-devel > IRC channels and gets a matching warning posted as part of the /topic. > > 3. At 11 AM Saturday, you do "apt-get updates && apt-get dist-upgrade" > on your server that tracks Debian-testing. It didn't occur to you to > consult recent debian-devel postings or the IRC channels for warnings. Aptitude queries the DBS and warns of any critical bugs filed against the package you're installing, which is a great safeguard. Saved my hide numerous times.
> To understand why someone might want to be on pure "unstable" instead of > "testing", it helps to understand how "testing" works: A quarantining > script runs, once per night, doing automated quality checks on packages > newly arrived and (as usual) populated without delay into "unstable". > If they pass those additional automated tests, including compiling > without error on multiple CPU architectures, then each such package > autopopulates into "testing", as well. If not, not. (There is also a > minimum quarantining delay, etc. The ruleset as of 2001 was described > by Jules Bean: "Testing FAQ" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian/ . > Be warned that the exact ruleset has probably changed, but you'll get > the basic idea.) There are three Debian systems here. My main workstation has testing because I like updated software, but do want some kind of assurance that nothing will break. My wife's workstation tracks stable because she never updates it, and I got tired of going to upgrade her system and finding there's 10^23 packages that need updating. My gaming machine runs unstable. Once upon a time, a single feature in packages like Mesa, wine, dosemu, or SDL made the difference between a game working and a game not working. Those days are pretty much gone now that these packages have matured. Running unstable isn't as crucial to gaming as it was back then, but I still run it from habit. Pete _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
