Re: debian experimental == ubuntu hoary?
On Sun, Feb 06, 2005 at 05:31:52PM +0100, Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo wrote:
> El dom, 06-02-2005 a las 08:08 -0600, Marcelo E. Magallon escribió:
> > I agree with Anand's POV.
> >
> > I think I have stated a couple of times that I dislike the kind of
> > abuse of 'experimental' that the gnome packages do
>
> Then why is experimental suited for?
Developer's Reference, 4.6.4.3:
The experimental distribution is a special distribution. It is not
a full distribution in the same sense as `stable' and `unstable'
are. Instead, it is meant to be a temporary staging area for
highly experimental software where there's a good chance that the
software could break your system, or software that's just too
unstable even for the unstable distribution (but there is a reason
to package it nevertheless).
I consider the apt version in experimental "highly experimental".
There was once a version of PostgreSQL in experimental; it was software
that could "break your system".
As broken as they have been, GNOME packages have never been so unstable
to consider them too unstable even for the unstable distribution.
< Here you tell me how user's desktop not breaking is of paramount
importance and that the slightest glicht will make them mad, Debian
looks bad and they move to another distribution and what not >
Well, it *is* unstable, as per 4.6.4.1: "Active development is done in
the unstable distribution (that's why this distribution is sometimes
called the development distribution). [...] Since no special effort is
made to make sure everything in this distribution is working properly,
it is sometimes literally unstable."
Under that light, you are treating experimental as unstable, unstable
as testing and testing as stable. Why is that, pray? Oh, yes,
stab^Wwoody is unusable as a desktop distribution, I keep forgetting.
> Everyone can set his own repo in gluck, alioth, sourceforge or any
> other hosting area.
Yep. That's right.
> > Recently I realized that this is also working around the NEW queue
> > problem: by staging packages _in_ the archive (e.g. in
> > experimental) you basically put a package in the queue for
> > ftp-master's attention and by prodding some ftp-master (say, on
> > IRC -- and this is a discussion by itself) you can skip ahead on
> > that queue.
>
> Yes, placing packages in experimental first works around NEW
> problem... and why is that wrong? That places the waiting period for
> new packages at the eary stages, when they are being tested, people
> testing don't mind getting them from other sources, and packages
> depending on those new packages can sit in experimental broken till
> those new packages are accepted without arising tons of bugs.
It's not wrong doing it. What's wrong is the handling of NEW.
> > What I'm saying is that I don't see an actual technical reason not
> > to use a staging area *outside* the archive (say, alioth) since --
> > at least the last time I read about this -- experimental isn't
> > autobuilded. One could argue about mirrors, but my *feeling* is
> > that the kind of people who are willing to use packages from
> > experimental don't mind much about not having certain package
> > mirrored. I'll be delighted if someone comes up with transfer
> > statistics that prove me wrong.
>
> Then let's remove experimental distribution. It has no sense now
> that hosting is cheap.
Now that's what you are saying, not what I'm saying.
Marcelo
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