Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]

[Ed Cogburn <ecogburn@greene.xtn.net>]

Rick Macdonald wrote:
> 
> Tommy wrote:
> >
> > When I upgraded the package lists  of
> > stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect ...
> 
> This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell
> dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always
> been afraid to do that.


	I'm doing that now and have been for awhile.  :-)  I had apt
setup to get hamm+slink (when slink was unstable), and then went
to slink+potato (slink is frozen and potato is unstable).  The
only advantage is getting access to the latest versions of
software, but that advantage comes with a price.
	Because often unstable really *is*  unstable, and you can end up
after an upgrade with a badly broken system, or at least a very
confused one.  This can occur because at any one time, unstable
could be completely broken by, for example, a new package that has
been uploaded that turns out to have a bug which interferes with
other packages.
	In addition, I went through a problem recently with GNOME.  2
weeks or so ago, an upgrade mysteriously broke GNOME.  I know
nothing about the inner workings of GNOME, so I ended up living
with the problem until a few days ago when another upgrade
mysteriously fixed the problem.
	I agree it is dangerous; you have to decide for yourself whether
the access to the latest stuff is worth the trouble of having to
deal with sometimes bizarre problems that will occasionally occur.


-- 
Ed C.