Packages temporarily disappearing from Testing/Lenny

[David <wizzardx@gmail.com>]

Hi list.

Something I've noticed with Testing/Lenny is that packages often
disappear for a short period (a few days or weeks) and then reappear.
A few current examples: xmms and nvidia-glx. If you look on
packages.debian.org they are in unstable and stable, but not testing.
comix was also gone for a while but is back again.

I understand that packages will take a while to get from unstable to
testing, but why would this process make packages disappear?

This is annoying. I install desktops from Debian Testing and can't
find packages. In this case I usually install the missing packages
from Unstable, but this can cause problems. For example, I installed
nvidia-glx from unstable on a testng box (along with the updated xorg
dependancies), and then I couldn't get X to work (dpkg-reconfigure
xserver-xorg no longer asked for video card, and makes an invalid
config file so X can't startup). After reinstalling X I'm now using
the nv driver until nvidia-glx returns to Testing.

Any suggestions? Should I be using Unstable instead of Testing for
desktops? (I've had bad experiences with Unstable in the past).

Regards,

David.