Re: Dangers of "stable" in sources.list

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Martin Marcher wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 5/3/07, martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> wrote:
> > also sprach Martin Marcher <martin.marcher@gmail.com> 
> > [2007.05.03.1217 +0200]:
> > > So what are the hints wether to use stable the actual name or not?
> >
> > From my book:
> > ....
>
> Exactly my opinion too, i was more interested in hearing why I would
> wan't stable instead of the hardcoded name. I just can't think of any
> reason to do that and practically have really use for it (except for
> the testing or unstable distribution as I pointed out initially)
>
> Am I solving problems here that wouldn't exist in the first place?
> Am I ignorant of why there is a "stable" tree (apart from the
> psychological impact that it now indeed is stable)?
As soon as I read the recommendation in Martin Krafft's book, I 
immediately changed all the lines in my sources.list from stable to 
sarge  - if I hadn't, I expect I would have been very unpleasantly 
surprised upon doing my first apt-get upgrade following Etch becoming 
stable.  Thanks Martin!

And ever since, I've wondered why the default sources.list specifies 
"stable" instead of a specific distribution.  It seems like a recipe for 
disaster for an awful lot of people.

Miles