On Lu, 15 feb 21, 08:20:39, Greg Wooledge wrote: > On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 10:47:41AM -0500, Michael Grant wrote: > > One comment though, in the 10+ years of running Debian Testing, I have > > to say that Testing is actually very reliable, way more reliable than > > it's name implies! > > This can be true for many users. It can also be catastrophically false > for a few users. > > > I initially moved to Testing because there were some packages that I > > needed which were not in Backports and were regularlly maintained in > > Testing. > > To be fully clear: nothing is "maintained in testing". That's not how > testing works at all. It's a mis-perception on your part. > > There is an automated software system that will copy a package from sid > into testing when certain conditions are met. Those conditions include: > > 1) There isn't a (hard) freeze on testing currently. > 2) The package in unstable has no release-critical bugs. That is, the package in unstable doesn't introduce *new* RC bugs. It will migrate if it still has the same RC bugs as the version in testing. > 3) The package's dependencies are all met in testing. > 4) The package has been in unstable for N days (the value of N varies > based on the importance of the package and other factors). > > In the case of your package, what probably happened is the Debian > developer who maintains that package was actively working on it, so > it received regular uploads to unstable (sid). Then, because the > package's dependencies were already satisfied in testing, and likely > did not change during the uploads to sid, the package was free to > "trickle down" to testing N days after the upload, consistently. > > This will not always be the case. What happens frequently in testing is > that a gargantuan package suite (like GNOME or other desktop environment) > will be held up by one bug, and will be stuck that way for months or > years, even if there are uploads being made to sid. No new versions will > trickle down to testing until that one bug is resolved, and then suddenly > the whole thing comes gushing down all at once. Security fixes will also get stuck if a dependency is not ready to migrate. Kind regards, Andrei -- http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser
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