Re: Can I stay in testing without going etch?
On Sat, 2006-05-20 at 22:44 +0300, Black Dew wrote:
> > 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.
>
> "stable" is just a pointer to the latest release. So if you put now
> "stable" in sources.list you'd be running Sarge.
> When Etch gets released, "stable" will point to Etch, so your system
> will upgrade (more or less) automatically next time you run apt-get update.
> Also if you add the security updates repository you will get critical
> security updates between releases.
>
> > Also, is the same true for unstable and testing?
>
> For testing: yes
> For unstable: the unstable "release" (Sid) doesn't have releases, your
> system will just get new packages as soon as they are available
> (sometimes causing major breakage :))
>
> And yeah, it's one of the great things with debian - there is no need to
> reinstall it whatever happens, you can always down/up-grade it to
> whatever you want.
Thanks Andrew, Paul, hendrik, & Black Dew, for all the great
information. Debian.org/releases/ explained the names
(stable/testing/unstable) but not much else.
I will probably follow stable unless the packages are all too old, then
will jump to testing. This brings up something else: if I have
"testing" in my sources.list file and replace it with "stable" (if I
want to go back to stable), what will aptitude do during an upgrade or
dist-upgrade? Will it down-grade packages or just not update them?
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