Re: Can I stay in testing without going etch?
On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 11:10:13AM -0500, Owen Heisler wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-05-18 at 23:37 -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> > Adam Hardy wrote:
> > >
> > > You mean 'testing' and 'etch' are interchangeable as far as the
> > > sources.list entry goes?
> > >
> > >
> >
> > lrwxrwxrwx 1 200 200 4 Jun 06 2005 testing -> etch
> >
> > The stable/testing/unstable names are just symlinks to the actual
> > codenames. So for now, testing and etch are the same. Once etch is
> > released, the symlinks will be upadted and testing will no longer be etch.
> >
> > -Roberto
>
> I have been following this thread as I am working on switching to
> Debian, and have just these questions:
>
> If I install Debian stable and have "stable" in the sources.list file,
> will updates keep happening, even across releases? I think it would be
> great it I never had to reinstall, yet could still have a completely
> up-to-date system.
>
> Also, is the same true for unstable and testing?
>
> Thanks for clarifying.
Look at http://www.debian.org/releases/
Concerning unstable: Sid is unstable is sid is called unstable is 'Still In Development'.
Don't use it until you have some experience with stable and testing.
New releases happen rarely, much more rarely than anyone involved
would like. The transition from one release to another is a bother,
but much less of a bother than with any other distribution that I have
used. But, IMHO, there can never be an absolutely bother free version
transition. In my experience, release transitions in Debian are
really, really easy, but they are harder to deal with than the
absolutely trouble free day-to-day operation of stable/Sarge.
When a new release does, finally, happen, you will have plenty of
warning. And plenty of false warnings, because there are always delays.
But the transition to a new release will never just happen without
warning.
When a new release is immanent, the release manager (a person, unlike
a window manager ;-), will place a hold on certain packages that are
in Sid, and appear to have unresolved issues that are not about to be
fixed. Testing will stabilize for this reason alone, but clean-up work
will continue on packages in testing that are really important to the
function of the new release. When the list of unresolved issues no longer
contains items that bother the release manager badly, he will trigger
the new release. If you are away on a trip when this happens, nothing
will happen to your Debian on your computer. Nothing will happen, in
fact, until you decide to download new stuff, and even then you can
avoid actually moving to the new release, if you wish. All this is
true whether you are running stable, testing, or unstable.
If you are running stable, you can move to the new release by
running # apt-get dist-upgrade . But before you do this, you
should read various documents that will be available at release
time about any special considerations.
If you are running testing, you can expect a period of instability
because testing is no longer frozen and various of the packages that
were held back in Sid, get moved into testing.
If you are running Etch, and use etch in your sources.list (on the
next release ONLY), and you have been updating regularly, you are
running the new stable without doing anything. The only thing that has
happened is that the status of the release that you're using has been
changed.
If you are running Sarge and use sarge in your sources.list, you won't
need to do anything to keep running sarge after the release of etch.
But you will have to do something, some day, about keeping your system
up to date.
My personal, risk averse choice is to watch and listen and when I hear
stuff that sounds like release holds are beginning to happen, I back
up my system on one machine and try a transition to Etch, or whatever,
is the name of the next release. If all goes well, I keep the
transition. As more and more reports indicate Etch is 'real soon now',
I transition some other machines to Etch. When Etch is finally
released, it is, for me, a non-event. Note, in this strategy I am
using the code name Etch, not the status word 'testing'. (Doing my
transition before the actual release, is IMHO very risk averse; If
during dist-upgrade, I have problems I can complain, and I will be
heard, and if my complaint has merit, release will be delayed.)
HTH
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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