Re: Bug#752450: ftp.debian.org: please consider to strongly tighten the validity period of Release files

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Dear ftpmasters:

Contrary to what this report suggests, I believe the current validity
of 7 days for testing and unstable is extremely low and should be
increased.

I have a laptop with testing which I use mostly on weekends. I have a
partial mirror there, which I try to update as soon as I login into
the system.

My sources.list points to the local mirror and very often it happens
that I want to install a package in the partial mirror before the
mirror update has finised. Well, many times it happens that the system
refuses to install anything because of expired Release file, sometimes
by a day or two, sometimes by just a few hours or minutes.

This is a real pain and it reminds me of "subscription" services or
DRM stuff, like those games that fail to work if the player is not "online".

Please consider increasing the expiration time. IMHO, an expiration
time of 30 days or something alike would be a lot better than the
current 7 days for testing and unstable.

Moreover, one day, testing will become stable and the expiration date
will probably be set to infinity. I think it would make sense if this
happen not suddenly but gradually during the frozen state of the
current testing distribution.

Thanks.