Re: Is the stable/unstable split broken?

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Russell Nelson writes ("Is the stable/unstable split broken?"):
> Is Debian's stable/unstable split a broken concept?
> 
> Here's the problem as I see it.  I want to run an operating system
> where I get to choose the level of instability.  So, when I run
> "apt-get update", I only want to get stable packages downloaded.  On
> the other hand, I want to be able to run Python 2.0, for example.
> Debian's only answer is that I should either install 2.0 in
> /usr/local, or else upgrade to unstable.  The first makes me wonder
> what problem dpkg is supposed to be solving, if the first answer to
> any problem is "work around it".  The second is unacceptable for the
> reason I just outlined.

What I do at the moment is install the unstable package, plus its
dependencies, by hand with dpkg.

This has a couple of problems:

* You have to figure out the dependencies yourself.  dpkg will stop
you getting it wrong, but it won't tell you easily how to get it right
and you don't get the right packages downloaded automatically.  This
is a deficiency shared by dselect and apt, I believe.

* Because of the way library packages are organised at the moment, you
may have to upgrade your entire development environment to that from
unstable.  This is a real killer, and I'm trying to get it addressed
with my proposal in the thread `Shared libraries' (Bug#83669).

> This creates problems, but the solution for every one of them is "Use
> the dependency system."  I would also note that not every version of
> everything is compatible with everything else.  A Debian user may have
> to upgrade some packages just because they upgraded one.  Oh well.
> That's a lot better than having to upgrade everything just to get
> Python 2.0.

Absolutely.

> dpkg may need to remember whether a user asked for a package, or
> whether it was installed as a dependency.  If the depending package is
> later removed, then the dependency package may also be removed.  I
> don't *think* it keeps track of that now.

That's right, but it should.

Ian.