Is anyone using woody in a production environment?

[john <johnpf@atnet.net.au>]

Hello everyone!

We have come to a point where we would like to use some software that is
currently in woody on a production server that is currently running
potato.

Now we have a few approaches as I see it:

1) We install the packages from upstream source into /usr/local/

OK, we're talking about openssl, curl-ssl, perl, libssl, apache,
apache-ssl, php etc. Might  be a nightmare to maintain in the future.
And since we'll be selling boxes with all this set up on them it's going
to make things much more expensive for us.

2) We upgrade to testing.

Is it safe? <image of Marathon Man>. Who is running production servers
on testing? what if any issues have arisen?

3) We build the Debian packages from testing on stable.

I've tried this, and either got it wrong <quite likely> or it just
doesn't work like that as build curl-ssl then wants perl, which doesnt
want libdbi-perl. It wants a libc6 upgrade. Which might (will it?) break
other things etc etc.

Any advice as to how to best manage this is appreciated - I'm
particularly interested in the opinions of anyone who has actually
_done_ this sort of thing.

Is there a safe and stable way to build/install woody packages onto a
potato system other than to dist-upgrade to woody?

Thanks in Advance,

John P Foster
http://www.golden-orb.com