Is using experimental distribution for shelter during freeze useful?

[Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>]

Hi,

 Well, we use experimental as "shelter" during freeze, but it's not good
 in my point of view.

 - During freeze, it is just ignored by most of the users since they
   wouldn't know there's a newer package in there (and they also afraid
   because it's in "experimental" ;). It means "not tested" if they were
   in Debian repository for a long time period
 - Re-uploading to unstable is just boring, and no values are added by it
 - unstable users wants new valued packages constantly. After release,
   "package flood" to unstable is not good.

 So, I guess putting fixed packages into "testing-proposed-updates" and
 to continue to upload packages to unstable during freeze period is better.

 Pros)
 - unstable distribution stays newest
 - No "unintended" changes will be introduced into testing during freeze

 Cons)
 - Maybe you should do cherry-picking changes from unstable to
   testing-proposed-updates, not just ask "unblock" to Release Managers. 
 - Harder to get users for test with testing-proposed-updates repository

 Your thoughts?


-- 
Regards,

 Hideki Yamane     henrich @ debian.org/iijmio-mail.jp