On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 02:11:51PM +0000, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> Arguments like
>
> On 2008-06-04 15:34, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> >> (2) To a user who wishes to use a working feature of an imperfect
> >> package, Debian is better with the imperfect package than
> >> without: MISSING PACKAGE < IMPERFECT PACKAGE < PERFECT PACKAGE.
> >> This is true even if the imperfect package has an avoidable
> >> publicized security bug.
> >
> > This user should use unstable.
>
> sound arrogant.
No it's not. A user that prefers to have broken software rather than
no software (if the option "non broken" software is absent) should use
unstable. I mean it.
You can easily use testing by default, and unstable if the program
isn't in testing, using an /etc/apt/preferences that contains:
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 990
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 500
Then it'll take packages from unstable if it's not in testing. You'll
have occasionally uninstalability problems when transitions are in
progress though. My answer wasn't arrogant, I'm merely annoyed at this
discussion where people want testing to be what it's not. There are
technical ways (the one I just cited is one, you can do it other ways if
you like) to cherry-pick some packages from unstable while using testing
for the rest. You absolutely want to use update-* from unstable ? fine.
Use that, you will continue to use them transparently.
But I repeat: testing is what will become the next stable. We don't
take buggy software in stable, and for <put your definition of non
essential software here> packages we *do* prefer no packages than a non
working one. If as a user you don't like this policy, then you don't
want to use stable or testing solely.
I'm sorry if in the discussion I assumed this technical solution was
obvious to the participants of the thread, it was a shortcut, not
arrogance.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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