Hi DDs, > [[ Marc Haber ]] > Experience with adduser shows that no-one besides the maintainers > themselves and their closest environment uses experimental packages. > [[ Simon Huggins ]] > See this worries me a bit. > > I'd love for Debian users to test some more cutting edge versions of > packages (partly so upstream gets more testers, partly so I can see the > bits I hate about the new versions and try to get them fixed) but I > don't want them in testing now until they are properly released as a > stable series. In fact, I don't really want them in unstable if it > means that in order to fix bugs which appear in testing I have to revert > to the stable set of packages in order to get them in. > > I guess the compromise is just to realise that they just won't be > thoroughly tested when they hit unstable if they've only been in > experimental before. > > But then it does make you wonder if it's worth putting anything in > experimental in the first place. > > Is there any better way I can get snapshots/betas tested by the majority > of users? Do people think that this is the sort of thing that should > just be uploaded to unstable and allowed to flow into testing? > > Simon. I wouldn't say that package maintainers are the only ones who use experimental packages. My main system is running experimental/unstable, and I usually report problems with the new packages immediately. I might not see all bugs, because I don't do strictly daily upgrades (and I don't have udev installed, so I can't comment on it), but I try to test every experimental package that hits the archive. But you surely won't reach the "majority of users" via experimental. Although I haven't experienced any major problems, I think I wouldn't dare running experimental if I didn't have some knowledge of Debian's mechanisms and tools, assured that I could fix upcoming problems myself in an emergency. Retaining a running system comes before reporting bugs and submitting patches... Yet I simply can't believe that the number of people who are gamy enough to run experimental is so small... Regards, Jan PS: My opinion definitively is to keep experimental.
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