Re: New user Q: Best way to stay up to date on "testing"?
On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:38:18 -0400, Kevin Mark
<kmark+debian-user@pipeline.com> wrote:
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> On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 04:05:31PM -0500, Jacob S wrote:
> > On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 15:18:02 -0500
> > JW <jw@mailsw.com> wrote:
> >
> > <snip - new user administering Debian co-lo>
> >
> > > I was reading the security FAQ and am somewhat alarmed to find (if I
> > > understand correctly) that Testing is not actively supported by the
> > > security team. Youch. If I could put stable on it I would, but for the
> > > reasons stated above I can't.
> >
> > 'Testing' is not actively supported, correct until you near release
> > time. Sarge has entered a freeze for the base packages, is in that 'near
> > release time' phase and is now getting security updates along with the
> > current 'Stable' (Woody). Sarge is expected to be released as the new
> > stable 'any day now'.
> >
> > <snip>
> Hi Folks,
> I can echo what Jacob said. there is only one release of debian: stable.
> testing is not a distrabusion--its just for folks testing stuff that at
> some point will go into stable. things can pop-in and pop-out
> unextectedly like all of kde. unstable is a pseudo-distro where you just
> get an influx of the latest packages. Things go reasonable smoothly in unstable but
> there are times when a few packages get broken and you may need to
> backtrack something or WAIT until folks say its OK to upgrade.
>
> But there is something to note: testing goes through stages. After a
> release testing is the same as the new stable. After a few months
> testing is then all mixed up with all new stuff. Then as things get more
> tested, testing become 'near' stable. Which is how it is now. At this
> point Debian starts to add security updates for testing/the next stable.
> This is sometimes called the 'frozen' release. And after some release
> critical issues: stable is born.
>
> also there are two ways to track debian: via release names(sarge) or via
> distributions(testing).
I think by now it is time to switch from testing to sarge in your
/etc/apt/sources.list. This will easily let you settle on the future
stable release without having to worry that at some point in time
everything will get switch from unstable->testing and testing->stable.
The codenames (potato, woody, sarge, etc.) provide a much more stable
migration path IMHO, because sarge will always be sarge, even though
it is now testing and will be stable soon.
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