Re: unstable/testing/stable
"Hans-J. Ullrich" <hans.ullrich@loop.de> writes:
> Hi dear maintainers,
>
> so now I am using Deban for many years, and I am very happy with it. But there
> is one thing I could not understand for the whole time, and this is its
> policy.
>
> Can someone explain, why packages, which are available in testing, are not
> available in sid any more ? As I read on the Debian site, all packages are
> going through unstable, then are going to testing. If this is so, then, all
> packages in testing should be (logically) in unstable, too. But often they
> are not. (i.e. beryl completely disappeared out of unstable).
I wouldn't call a handfull out of 20000 packages often. It happens
that is all.
Sometimes packages get replaced by others and it takes time for that
change to migrate to testing. Apart from that I can't think of a
reason why tesing should have debs that unstable has not. But read
http://wiki.debian.org/ftpmaster_Removals to learn about removals.
> Another thing I would ask: If running unstable (sid), is it always recommended
> to add the entries for stable and testing in /etc/sources.list, too ? I do
> so, and had no problems yet, but is it recommended or necessary ? This will
> increase the database.
>
> I know, these are stupid questions, but I could not find exact answers in the
> documentations.
I would recommend keeping testing so you can go back to a working
version if something breaks in unstable. Keeping stable seems wasted
but can't hurt. Only "bad" effect is increasing the amount of
downloads and database size.
MfG
Goswin
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