Re: Frozen unstable (was: please test the numpy package)
On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 07:24:47AM +0100, Michael Hanke wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 05:17:11PM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Ondrej Certik <ondrej@certik.cz> writes:
> > > I am unhappy that unstable gets frozen for such a long time, but I
> > > understand that with the current setup (e.g. unstable, testing, ..),
> > > there is probably no other way.
> > I'm unhappy about it too, but I don't understand it. Where can I find
> > an explanation for the necessity of freezing ‘unstable’ when preparing
> > to release ‘testing’?
> I'd be also very interested about this information -- which seems to be
> common sense -- but I cannot see the necessity as well.
It's not necessary to freeze unstable when preparing to release testing;
this is a significant reason why testing exists as a separate suite.
So in fact, unstable is *not* frozen. It is recommended to treat unstable
as frozen for libraries, because uploads of such central packages to
unstable makes it more onerous to get fixes to other packages depending on
those libraries into testing via the normal route; but I'm of the opinion
that the pendulum has swung too far the other direction for lenny, with
maintainers uploading leaf packages to experimental instead of to unstable
for freeze reasons, when the probability of an upload to unstable causing
more work for the lenny release is infinitesimal.
(I understand that the current discussion is about a case of a package with
a lot of reverse-dependencies; so I don't disagree with the conclusion to
avoid an upload to unstable for now.)
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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