Re: question for sources.list
On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 11:46:19AM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 02, 2005 at 10:40:40PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> >
> > So, until some time in the far future, people should not say to
> > newbies that release code names and release status names ('stable',
> > 'testing', etc.) are interchangeable. They are not. Existing support
> > for release code names is, in fact, quite restricted by comparison.
>
> People that want stability had better use the release code names, otherwise
> they will suddenly be dragged into the future every few years and
> have little control over it.
>
> People who want frequent releases had better specify the release
> status name (testing) or every few years their system will gradually
> start going out of date.
>
> People who break toys can use either. Aren't "sid" and "unstable"
> really interchangable?
>
Yes, but that is a vacuous test. Sid/unstable _always_ contains the
packages with the highest version number. It _never_ needs to be
specified as the preferred release, if it is the release that you wish
to follow. On the other hand, if you wish to follow mainly testing,
and have sid/unstable in your sources.list so that you can pick up a
few packages before they reach testing, using 'etch' in either
apt.conf or apt/preferences does _not_ prevent the automatic upgrade
of _all_ packages from testing to unstable. IMHO, very few newbies
really want to track unstable, though some may want to grab one or two
packages from it.
When you do grab a package from sid/unstable, you must use 'unstable'
on the command line to apt-get (you might think you can use the version,
but sid/unstable does not have a version number)
In short, even for sid/unstable, the release code name and the 'Archive name'
are _not_ equivalent.
It is easy to run your own tests of this. If it matters to you, you should
run your own tests. The wording of the documentation is difficult to
understand, but not incorrect. If doesn't matter to you, and/or you have
not run some careful tests of your understanding, you should refrain from
giving advice.
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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