Re: How to update Debian 11 source.list to testing?
On Fri, Sep 03, 2021 at 06:24:31PM +0100, Brian wrote:
> On Fri 03 Sep 2021 at 10:40:32 -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> > deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
> > deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
> Surely - if you have a package installed from a previous release,
> it does not get removed simply because testing does not have it?
Correct.
> It looks to me that the first line in sources.list does not help
> in this situation.
Also correct, *but* it does help if you want to install something from
stable that has been removed from testing.
In the absence of "pinning", using the two lines that The Wanderer
posted would give you a testing system, with the option to pull in
packages from stable if needed. It's a viable setup. Sensible.
The problem is, sometimes people think it's the opposite of that.
They think they can run a "mostly stable" system with the option to
cherry-pick packages from testing. This is *NOT* the case. And no
amount of "pinning" will make it so.
(If you actually want such a system, use stable-backports. That's
what they're for. Do not pull binary packages from testing. I know,
we say this every 3 days, but that's because the issue *comes up*
every 3 days. We can't stamp it out.)
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