Re: problems with the concept of unstable -> testing
Steve McIntyre schrieb:
> Alexander wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Bastian Venthur schrieb:
>>> Another way to see it is that unstable is constantly flowing and
>>> we're just forking a stable distribution from it from time to time.
>> Sounds like what was done before testing was introduced, which worked even
>> less, with even longer freeze periods, where you couldn't even upload to
>> experimental. How does your proposal solve the issues we had back then?
>
> I'm curious about that myself. We've tried that in the past, and a
> 3-year release cycle was what happened. Experience tells us that we
> have much too big a system to suddenly one day declare "release"
> without a lot of preparation beforehand.
Actually, I don't know since I'm not long enough involved to know what
happened "back then". Did testing at some point in time fork from
unstable and developed slowly into stable while unstable was still
developing concurrently? Did uploads go directly to testing or to
something before testing (like the current frozen unstable)? What was
the problem that lead to a slow development back then? Was it that it
was still possible to upload into unstable and so noone was actually
interested in fixing RC bugs?
What I see *now* is that the freezes during the last two and the current
release are getting longer and longer (~1,5 months, ~4 months and for
Lenny at least 5 months). For me this seems to be a serious problem we
should not ignore. Important software is outdated in unstable and
current hardware doesn't work anymore without resorting to grab packages
from experimental or unofficial sources.
Cheers,
Bastian
--
Bastian Venthur http://venthur.de
Debian Developer venthur at debian org
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