Re: Debian home page -> Download link broken:
The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2023-06-11 at 07:50, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
...
>> If you track "testing" (something which has been deprecated for a
>> while)
>
> What? Since when? This is the first I remember having heard of this.
ditto...
> Certainly the "continuously usable testing" thing seems to have not gone
> anywhere, or otherwise stalled - but that doesn't mean that testing
> isn't usable, or useful, or that tracking it is impractical, or anything
> of that nature; just that you have to expect that by doing so you will
> occasionally see things break, e.g during library transitions, and have
> to wait for those things to be resolved.
exactly, as i have always experienced and anticipated.
i've been running testing + a few packages from sid for
quite a long time. i also keep a stable partition (which
is not following a code name either). i understand how
those work along with sid.
>> then you must expect that it will change very unexpectedly on a
>> release and then large changes immediately after as everything else
>> catches up with being unfrozen.
>
> Of course it will. I actually look forward to seeing that happen, and
> watching the flood of new package versions come in after a new release.
same here. i'm glad the new stable release is out!
kudoes to all Debian developers, maintainers and the
rest of the Debian community! :)
> But that doesn't mean that we should be presented with this opaque "this
> thing has changed, so we're going to refuse to update at all till you do
> something to approve that change; here's a reference to a man page which
> briefly mentions something about the technical details of why this
> happens, but doesn't explain anything about how to approve the change,
> or point to any other documentation which does explain that".
>
> We *are already tracking testing*, *by that name*. We *know* that when a
> new stable is released, the release codename that is in testing is going
> to change. That is *expected*. It is aggravating to see this prompt at
> all - let alone to see it again and again, once every few years, and
> have to dredge into my memory (since it's been a few years since the
> last time I needed the information) for where to look to find the
> correct incantation to actually bypass it.
gladly someone did refresh my decrepit memory.
> The same thing applies to those who track 'stable' by that name. Using
> the symbolic names for the releases, rather than the actual codenames,
> *is semantically different* and the tools *should treat it differently*.
i don't really care how it is treated but if
someone is tracking testing then breaking that is
expected at times, but also fixes which seem
reasonable should be applied and one fix i'd be
in favor of is just accepting that change auto-
matically for people who are tracking testing
and then others who want to fiddle with the
codenames can do what they'd like.
> I could achieve the same practical result by using the release
> codenames, and manually editing sources.list after each release - but
> that loses out on the *convenience* factor, as well as being
> conceptually inappropriate; if you have something that has to be done
> over and over in exactly the same way every time, on a computer, and you
> are not automating it, you are Doing It Wrong. Using the symbolic names
> should make it possible to avoid those manual steps, and in fact it used
> to do just that, but it no longer does.
pretty much what i just wrote above in much finer
words. :)
> As songbird said: it should all "just work".
>
> I'm actually startled that, judging from the fact that your responses
> have been centered on explaining the use of Debian codenames, you seem
> to have so completely misinterpreted the objection being raised here.
yes, but he is writing for the much wider audience
perhaps? it's ok.
as someone who's been aware of Debian since "Slink" and
running it for a good long time i'm pretty well steeped in
things and have tried various scenarios and also tried
some other distributions but none really stacked up as
well as Debian has. for that it is a big thanks for the
many volunteers who've done the work over the years and
i hope will continue for many more. :)
songbird
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