Hint: uploading to experimental instead of unstable

[Ludovic Brenta <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org>]

In Bug#239769 opened against music123, Xavier Grave wrote:
> using a temporary vector and apply sort on it fix the bug and respect
> command line order. This is implemented in version 16.2 and should be
> uploaded when 16.0-1 reaches testing.

Here is a hint, just for the record.

In this situation, you (the package maintainer) can upload a new version
to experimental instead of unstable.  For this the only change you need
to make to the package is in the first line of debian/changelog.  In this
case it should read:

music123  (16.2-1) experimental; urgency=low

Also, remember that packages in experimental never migrate to testing
(or to unstable, for that matter), so you will have to re-upload to
unstable at a later point in time with a new version number:

music123  (16.2-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Satisfied with the new features, upload to unstable.

This technique allows your numerous and impatient users to test fixes
while not disturbing unstable.  The impatient users must add lines to
their /etc/apt/sources.list like so:

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ experimental main

and do "aptitude update".  The normal case is to add experimental
packages to an unstable system but it is also possible, in some cases,
to do this on top of a testing system, too.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.