Re: User-contrib, up-to-date stable
On Tue, Oct 21, 1997 at 08:00:46PM -0400, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> Paul> Right! It is inacceptable to have to rely on slightly outdated
> Paul> software when running a system which has to stay reasonably stable
> Paul> and you do need this new version of package xyz existing in 'hamm'.
>
> That is nonsense, and not very polite to boot. For well over two years, I
> 'risked', among other things, my PhD dissertation by using 'unstable' as my
> sole computing platform --- which proved to be an extremely stable, reliable
> and productive computing environment to get not only that dissertation
> done. There is nothing wrong with using "unstable" if you want to be cutting
> edge. You risk what you called 'hazzles' and 'annoyances' by using *cutting
> edge upstream releases* anyway.
Indeed. Why is it so unacceptable to be running old upstream releases
anyway? When packages go stable in debian, it means that the people
who tested the release have verified, as best they can, that the software
works correctly, by not filing bug reports. Is there really any
functionality added in the latest upstream releases that is absolutely
required on a production system, especially when (as Dirk points out)
the upstream release might not be stable? Paul cites the example of
perl 5.004; isn't it likely that any perl script requiring perl 5.004
is rather fresh and therefore not verified to be stable itself,
and therefore by Paul's definition, not suitable for a production system?
In short, can you really have a current system labelled "stable"? It may
be stable, but it needs time to prove itself ...
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt, StudIEAust hamish@debian.org, hmoffatt@mail.com
Student, computer science & computer systems engineering. 3rd year, RMIT.
http://hamish.home.ml.org/ (PGP key here) CPOM: [***** ] 56%
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