Re: What's the best package manager for single-package upgrades?

[Joe Rhett <jrhett@isite.net>]

> > If testing is what is supposed to be the next release, then it seems
> > pointless to even bother. "Testing" still has Mozilla 1.0.  That's what,
> > 2 years old?
> 
> We're working on it, but the mozilla package is buggy, which makes it
> difficult to make the testing management scripts happy with it.
 
So buggy that it runs 2 years behind?

> > > Well, that's basically exactly how it works. There's quite a few extra
> > > details but that's the "meat and potatoes" of it so to speak. :)
> > 
> > Then why is there really zero updates in testing?
> 
> That's just rubbish, sorry. (I help manage testing; I watch what it's
> doing almost every day.)
 
Let me rephrase.  Either the US mirrors are screwed, or there is less than
a dozen packages in testing.  Because adding testing to the sources list
and doing an apt-get update (which was successful) and then trying to
upgrade packages gets me next to nothing.  I found hundreds more packages
in 'security' than I did in testing, which actually baffles me since they
should have much of the same content according to the debian guidelines.

Perhaps my product selections are biased: I really could care less about
the latest and greatest desktop.  They are pretty.  But a browser that
actually works is required to do my job, for example. Updates to the 
wireless drivers to improve device support would be useful.  Stuff that has
been safe and stable within Sid for over a year now (according to the
package pages) still isn't appearing in testing.

In short, it appears that if one actually wants to use Debian as a desktop,
one has no choice but to throw the debian guidelines out the window and run
with unstable.  This means you lose commonality with any server 
'stable' systems you might need to run.

-- 
Joe Rhett                                                      Chief Geek
JRhett@Isite.Net                                      Isite Services, Inc.