On Monday 14 February 2011 12:32:20 Erin Brinkley wrote: > One thing I would like to add is that when Debian has a major upgrade, it > should ALWAYS keep your config files. I know that it asks whether you want > to install the new maintainer version or keep your old, but this is always > a headache. I think the best answer is to merge the new features/options > with the current existing user's version. The "ucf" package and its usage is growing among Debian packagers. This allows a merge process to occur, at least in some cases. > Because whenever I choose to go > with the new, I might get new options but all my customizations are gone > and I have to go find the old config and figure it all out from scratch. > If I just keep the old, then I loose all the new options and this > sometimes breaks things too. Check for files with the extension .dpkg-old and .dpkg-new. If you choose to "Install Maintainer's Version" then your config is saved to .dpkg-old. If you choose to "Keep Existing Version" then the maintainer's copy is installed to .dpkg-new instead. > No more Toy Story names, but you just pick stable or unstable or testing > or experimental, and then upgrades happen incrementally, slowly, every day > or every week instead of every year or year and a half you have this huge > upgrade that breaks everything and causes mass chaos for about a week. I think you miss the point of "stable". It *doesn't change* without an announcement, making it "unchanging" a.k.a. "stable". I use stable-updates (previously volatile) and (of course) security, so I get little updates between point releases, but they are always clean and I'll be using unattended-upgrades throughout the squeeze cycle to save myself some work there. However, I would be quite irked if the postgresql-8.3 to postgresql-8.4 upgrade, or the dovecot upgrade, or the spamassassin upgrade, all that occured during my Lenny -> Squeeze transition hit without warning. Heaven help me if someone had taken my KDE 3 away and replaced it with KDE SC 4.0/4.1. It was beta software enough when I installed KDE SC 4.2 from unstable on my mostly stable system. (Yeah, I know how to run a mixed stable+backports+testing+unstable+experimental system, and I use that to get the new versions I want when stable just doesn't have the software them.) It's not always possible to have a completely clean upgrade, usually due to limitations of the already installed base. I like being able to schedule my administration time instead of having it required of me. With testing/unstable it's little things (and not-so-little things) at unpredictable times. With stable, you control exactly when you upgrade (at least within the 1-year/next-release time frame), but you have to deal with all those little (and no-so-little) things at once. > > Like I said I would SO prefer to > just upgrade software incrementally all the time. It would reduce user > headaches plus it would keep Debian much more up to date. Run testing or unstable. Pitch in during freezes to keep them short and keep packages flowing into unstable. Help with the CUT (constantly usable testing) planning and implementation -- the goal appears to be a "rolling" that's not quite as fragile as unstable. Stable serves it's purpose very well, and it is what I want for the most part (2x VPS, 1x laptop, 1x desktop). I think the output of CUT could also be a very good thing for Debian, but it is not what I need or what, and it is dependent on those that would use such a "rolling" distribution to help shape what it looks like and provide the extra labor required. (I think Debian can provide both "stable" and "rolling" as top-tier products, but there is some doubt; maintainers might only "care" about one and not do the work to ensure the other stays high quality. It would be sad for stable to go away.) -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/
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