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Re: distinguish between "core" and "main"?



On Sat, Jun 04, 2011 at 05:07:26PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> About the package set dependencies:  The core package sets would be
> self contained, i.e. they would not depend upon packages outside of
> their own core set. The new main/testing repository would be meant
> to work with both core/stable and core/testing.
> 
> Using some very rough numbers:
> Instead of main repositories for stable and testing with 30000
> packages each we would have core repositories for stable and testing
> with 1000 packages each, and a common non-core repository with 29000
> packages, to be used together with both core/stable and core/testing.
> That would be 60000 packages vs 31000 packages.

Based on these numbers, your suggestion removes stable/main and uses
testing/main for all "stable" systems. This introduces the idea that
packages in a system that we consider to be "stable" have only been
tested for 10 days (the time it takes for a low priority package to
migrate from unstable to testing).

The idea further says nothing about oldstable, which is a supported
Debian release. It takes the benefit of installing a system and knowing
that it will be supported for the next 4yrs away completely and this is
something than many Debian users cherish.

> Drbd, libvirt and other virtualization solutions,
> third party software, etc. are examples.

The idea of second-class packages means specializing what Debian is used
for. You may consider it alright that your virtualization software has
only been tested for 10 days. Other people would rather have the
virtualization software that has been tested for much longer and won't
crash their production virtual machines. So, does that virtualization
software belong in core or main? We've already seen what you think, but
I'd be willing to bet many Debian users would disagree.

Debian is the universal operating system. If you want to specialize what
Debian does, please consider starting a Debian derivative. Assuming you
are not alone in your ideas, you may have some future user base waiting
for you.

Thanks
--
Kyle Willmon


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