Re: Is the stable/unstable split broken?

[Matthew Palmer <mjp16@ieee.uow.edu.au>]

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Russell Nelson wrote:

>  >     Russell> I propose that Debian eliminate the concept of the stable
>  >     Russell> vs unstable distributions, and instead have a
>  >     Russell> meta-package called "stable".  If I say "apt-get upgrade
>  >     Russell> stable", that upgrades me to the latest version of
>  >     Russell> stable, which of course also fetches all the packages it
>  >     Russell> depends on.
>  > 
>  > If I understand correctly, you want to be able to:
>  >  
>  > apt-get install stable    (to install stable)
>  > apt-get install xyz       (to install the latest unstable version of xyz)
>  > 
>  > the second operation would automatically remove stable - not good...
> 
> No, because stable specifies all its dependencies in terms of ">=x.y".
> For people who want the stable distribution, this always works,
> because they never install anything that stable doesn't specify.  So,
> they *always* have exactly what's specified in stable.

If you're thinking of creating a meta-package called 'stable' which depends
on the stable version of every package, typing apt-get upgrade stable will
install every single package listed therein.  Does anyone else have a
problem with that?


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Matthew Palmer
mjp16@uow.edu.au