Re: New release over due
On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, Matthew Dalton wrote:
> Then there is the situation where you want a certain program, but the
> program developer provides only debian packages linked against potato
> libraries. What if this program is needed for the system to "do what is
> required"? I encountered this situation myself, but since I didn't want
> to subject myself to a lengthy upgrade process, I didn't bother with the
> program. You might ask "So why didn't the developer compile Slink deb's
> as well?". Good question. I suspect that developers like to have the
> latest libraries etc as well, which explains why this particular one was
> using potato.
This is what has bitten me. Have a system that uses the foo package but
foo depends on huge-package_1.1 . Maintainer recompiles tiny foo but it
was linked against, and depends on, huge-package_1.2 . So now you are
faced with two choices ... neither one good ... either download the
sources for foo, huge-package, and all the -dev packages you need to
compile it and build it for your system ... or you download both packages
and HOPE that huge-package_1.2 does not require you to update a bunch of
other packages that have nothing to do with foo.
That is the price for using unstable ... I understand that. The problem is
that it is so long between freezing of releases (wasn't slink frozen over
a year ago) and updates to stable are so few and far between, stable
should be relinked to ancient after about 6 months.
I don't think that unstable is too unstable ... I think that stable is too
doggone stable :)
Want PAM, go to unstable. Want zebra, go to unstable. Want recent web
stuff, go to unstable. Trouble is it takes work to maintain and everyone
is really busy.
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