Re: kitchen

[Adam Shand <larry@spack.org>]

> Problems with unstable are mostly in dependencies and pre/postinst
> scripts, and other minor packaging errors.  Of course, if software you
> use a lot has a version in unstable that is actually an alpha or beta
> version, but a stable version is in woody, then you might not want to
> run all unstable.

i'll second this.  i've tracked unstable for years.  i pay pretty close
attention to what apt says it's going to do (like a few months ago i tried
to upgrade apache and it wanted to remove apt ... not good) but i've
rarely had a problem that i can't fix in 5-10 minutes.  almost always it's
just package ordering problems not being taken care of quite right.

that being said i'm pretty careful on my server (where a 15 minute outage
is a big deal), but on my laptop it's no biggie.

> What I do is run woody, but with the unstable repositories in my
> sources.list, and APT::Default-Release "testing";  in my apt.conf.
> (see apt_preferences(5), etc.)  This way, apt-get install package gets
> the package from woody, unless it only exists in unstable.  apt-get
> install package/unstable gets the unstable version.  apt-get -t
> unstable lets apt upgrade the dependencies to their unstable version
> if necessary.

this is really cool.  guess it's been a while since i read the apt man
page!  i've wanted this for so .... long ...

thanks!
adam.