Re: Unstale: Recommendation to wait with an dist-upgrade
Hi David,
On Mittwoch, 1. Juni 2016 15:51:54 CEST David Goodenough wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 June 2016 14:52:44 Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > In case you want to avoid an after about 10 minutes crashing plasma
> > session
> > due to ksmserver not finding a symbol in a window manager related library,
> > I recommend you to wait till you can get plasma-workspace, kscreen, kwin
> > related packages from unstable. Otherwise you need to install some
> > kscreen + kwin packages from experimental temporarily to get back a
> > working session.
> >
> > You can also wait for plasma-desktop as well, Maxy just uploaded it.
> >
> > Akonadi 16.04 seems to work fine, but is not yet fully completely at
> > 16.04,
> > and KDEPIM packages are still to come for 16.04.
> With a large transition like this it would REALY helpful to people who
> follow sid (which I guess is many of the people on this list) if there was
> an email saying that such an upgrade had started (there was one
> where someone noted it had started this time) and then one saying
> when it had finished. Especially when the list of packages making up
> KDE has changed it is really had to know when everything is in place
> and therefore we can restart regular dist-upgrades.
Yes, it would be good, and still:
Again and again and again: Debian Unstable is called Debian Unstable for a
reason.
If you expect the principle of least surprise use stable. Or if its release
cycle is too slow, help on improving that or choose another distro that does
quicker release cycles.
It is exactly as easy as that.
First: The team is very small and has a *lot* of work to do. I prefer them to
get new packages in quickly. That said I am grateful for an increase in
answers to questions asked here by Maxy and Lisandro.
Second: The order in which packages appear in Sid is not predictable. Packages
may fail to build unexpectedly. And are build in different speeds and order on
different architectures.
Third: I try to help a bit, as I upgrade daily and warn about issues I find.
Other adventurous users can help as well.
Fourth: You also can offer the team your help and offer them to write such
mails for them.
Fifth: There have been mails here on the list that basically announced the
current update cycle. Actually the last I wrote in the "Yay, its coming"
thread I started. I basically announced it on the day I saw the first packages
being uploaded. So an announcement was there since on 19th of May already. And
it was really easy to pick up, I´d say.
Sixth: You can subscribe to debian-devel-changes or for Plasma / KF5 debian-
qt-kde-ml and see any packages flowing in. On the qt-kde-ml you can basically
see them as the developers upload them. Usually it takes about 5 to 12 hours
(rough subjective estimate) for them to appear on the mirror I use so there is
some prior "warning" time and I at least have an estimate beforehand whats
coming. And Maxy usually uploads in cycles of 30 to 100 packages or so,
whenever you see such a cycle coming in, you know changes are coming.
Seventh: There can be any amount of any other disruptive updates in Debian
Sid. Do you want announcements for these as well?
8th: Even the packaging team does not know all the version dependencies. So
while its already unprectable when exactly packages come available, its even
more unpredictably what versions work well with one another and what interim
combinations may break. Things seem even to break in different ways depending
on when users upgrade, when I read experiences on this list.
I still think, yay it would be nice, but if I can choose between the team
spending time on packaging or writing mails I personally prefer packaging
*any* time.
Sorry, but I get a bit fed up by comments that things could be better without
offering any help. I rather choose to be grateful and look what is there and
help where I can. Also we had all of this discussion here before. I am
seriously fed up with it.
If you are not willing to deal with breakages as packages flow in, then either
don´t use unstable or ask here on the list what other users think about the
current state, before you upgrade.
On any account, if you want I can tell on the list when I think that the
current transition is over and things have stabilized. I.e. in a few days or a
week no serious updates are coming in anymore. As I said I upgrade daily and I
think I will find out when most packages are in as I am also somewhat
knowledgeable about the package structure of Plasma 5 / KF 5.
I think for KF 5 and Plasma its quite complete already, but there are
literally hundreds of packages. And I know KDEPIM is not yet complete. But the
current state of KDEPIM 15.12 on Akonadi 16.04 works wonderfully in unstable.
My current rough estimate out of a gut feeling would be: If you want principle
of least surprise wait at least 3-4 more weeks before you upgrade. Then likely
Qt 5.6.1 is in as well.
Thanks for your consideration,
--
Martin
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