Re: Why is Debian lagging so much behind Slackware?

["Keith G. Murphy" <keithmur@mindspring.com>]

Hall Stevenson wrote:
> 
> > > > Well, to an extent. Sometimes when you
> > > > report a problem with a package, the
> > > > maintainer's reply is basically, "well, use
> > > > the latest one from unstable or wherever,
> > > > that should work, I'm not interested in fixing
> > > > the old version too",
> > >
> > > Disinterest in old versions is part of it - but
> > > also, package maintainers usually can't update
> > > the versions in stable except for security problems
> > > and the like. The upload simply wouldn't be accepted.
> 
> So if a "bug" isn't found during a package's testing phase,
> it's not going to get fixed ?? I'm referring to non-security
> bugs, of course. Almost sounds "arrogant", as if someone
> doesn't want to admit that they missed something...
> 
No, I honestly don't think it's that at all.  The problem is, once you
let the package maintainers update stable on the fly with bug fixes, how
do you ensure they don't break something major (which may not even be
the package itself in isolation, but interaction with others)?

Which means you'd have to be integration-testing the stable release
constantly.  Not really doable.

(It's not good enough to let them do it only if they say, "This is just
a trivial bug-fix."  There *will* be breakage, because people make
mistakes.)

In reality, the point is *almost* moot, because the testing that a
release goes through before it becomes stable is really quite thorough,
so there aren't many show-stopper bugs.