Re: BO

[Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu>]

On Wed, 2 Apr 1997, Leon Castellanos wrote:

> Ok I downloaded BO to see if I could contribute to the debian effort by
> testing the packages and reporting bugs, but to my surprise it is so BETA
> that I cannot even install it.  I understand that debian is a volunteer
> effort and that what ppl do for debian is out of their own free will.
> Concerning the UNSTABLE release it is understood that there ARE bugs in the
> packages, but that does not mean that they should NOT, at least work! does
> it? I would imagine that if you maintain a package, you should at least
> test it yourself, and more importantly if its related to the main
> installation process (as with current problems with dinstall).  Alot of
> people may not know enough about coding, script, debugging to go into the
> installation script and check/fix the problems that it has, but they may be
> able to test packages and report bugs; of course they can't do that if they
> can't get through the BASE installation  :/

Look.  This is nice, but bo has not been released, and we are working on 
a new installation procedure which includes support for floppyless 
installations.  We are aware that the current disk set in bo does not 
work properly, and several of us are in the process of testing the 
installation as thoroughly as we can right now.

Note that the present installation disks have _not_ been released.  
So, you are helping by testing them.  Note also, that you are overlooking 
the possibility of upgrading a 1.2 system to bo.  This is also a method 
that needs testing, and it doesn't depend on the installation disk 
directory.

As a member of Debian's newly formed testing team, I thank you for your 
interest in helping test the unstable distribution.  It is precisely to 
find the problems that you described that we encourage all developers to 
keep at least one system mirroring unstable.  This is why we've tended to 
have more problems with "from scratch" installations than upgrades, 
because all the 150+ developers tend to use the upgrade method and find 
the major problems quickly.  However, these upgrades tend to be 
incremental, and we tend to miss the problems that arise due to upgrading 
the entire distribution from, say 1.1 or 1.2 to bo all at once.

Once again, thanks for your help, and please consider what I've said 
here in regard to your previous comments.

Cheers.  Syrus.

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Syrus Nemat-Nasser <syrus@ucsd.edu>    UCSD Physics Dept.