Re: Drop testing
> It may sound a bit radical, but core points have been mentioned in the
> thread already. I suggest to do it in a more radical way:
>
> - unstable lockdown in the freeze
> - drop Testing and concentrate on work instead of wasting time on
> synching stuff. This eliminates the need for testing-security. See
> the last part of the paper for details.
Doing this would result in many users who currently run testing fall
back to stable + backports or switch to another distro (ubuntu being a
likely candidate), which in turn, would result in less bugreports and a
less stable distribution. I, for one, wouldn't run unstable on my
parents' box, whereas testing proved to be quite reliable there.
Freezing unstable will get you nothing compared to what we have now.
Those who don't care about a release, will not care that way either,
just their complaints will get louder and more frequent. Those who are
willing to do the work neccessary for the release are already trying to.
Remember, Debian is a volunteer project, you cannot force people to do
something they do not want to.
> - about the "filtering updates for frozen" - yes, some additional
> manpower is required but that work must be done. The problems with
> Testing synchronisation are not of pure technical nature, they are
> social problem, and so they should be solved by people and not
> scripts.
Yes, testing synchronisation is not a purely technical matter. Nor is it
purely social, so the testing scripts, which automatically keep stuff in
sync, are a real help. On top of that, package maintainers coordinating
with each other (the social part) is welcomed too, and should be
encouraged. (And those who break a transition should be kicked in the
ass, so they won't try it again :P)
I firmly believe that fixing the problems with testing (mainly
testing-security at this point in time) would be MUCH better than
dropping testing and freezing unstable before the next release.
--
Gergely Nagy
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