Scott James Remnant wrote:
Yes, that's what we mean. The reason is that for various things (e.g., buildd, ftp-mastery, ...), we need to be able to manipulate source packages with the tools in stable. Note, I said "manipulate", not "build".Why can't you just install the unstable ones?
For comparison, the unstable versions of both dak and debbugs *trail* the versions actually used on ftp-master.d.o and bugs.d.o. The recent debootstrap changes are a pretty strong encouragement to use a newer version of apt on ftp-master than is currently in unstable (or experimental for that matter) to release etch, too.
For core infrastructure, running the latest working version just makes sense; whether it's released as stable or not.
The only reason to delay using features until they're in stable is for users' benefit: eg, if something stops you being able to upgrade to etch from sarge, that would suck.
I can't see any particular reason to delay the new source format. Reasons to speed it up, otoh...
Cheers, aj