Re: Debian home page -> Download link broken:
Greg Wooledge wrote:
...
> The overwhelming majority of people who track testing think that it's
> a rolling release. It's not. It's actually a series of evolving
> release candidates, with periods of great disruption interspersed with
> periods of relative calm.
>
> You're clearing replying to someone who thinks it's a single rolling
> release, so set your expectations accordingly.
yes, we experience it as it happens, which can sometimes
be months or even years before the official stable release
happens and new images are built. the comment about
release candidates is appropriate because that is why
such things as RC bugs are filed and attempted to be
fixed before a release actually happens, but that
release is a stable and official one and not as far as
i've ever seen it is not a "release" so calling it a
rolling release is a contradiction in terminology. it
is not a release, but it is a collection of packages
in a certain state of being which can change as new
packages migrate from unstable (or via testing-pu or
via other means that perhaps i'm not aware of). i just
know that for sure it is not "magic". :) someone has
to do it and make the upload and other things may come
along and make changes (janitor programs are now doing
some things, etc.)
release notes may not be written and some cases may
even be forgotten about.
with testing, stuff can happen, like sid, stuff can
break. that is just how it goes and i'm quite ok with
that because i also do keep a stable partition (which
is currently not upgraded yet and won't be until a
point release or two down the line). my stable is even
more stable than the released stable. there's nobody
to force me to upgrade or mysterious software controlled
by someone else running to mess with my machine (as i do
not run auto updates).
can you point me to any official statement from the
project as a whole which says that testing is released
and there are official images for people to download?
i know of daily and weekly builds of the installer and
some images but i have never seen any statement from
the project as a whole that "testing" is a release
candidate and treated as such. yes, it is the basis
of the next stable release, but it is not anything
more than a pool of packages in a directory structure
which can be copied and updated like any other
directory.
it is, in other words, the collection of packages
which are used which are the stable release and not
anything else which is the main product of making such
a stable release and it is the release team which
builds that and puts it all together. as far as i'm
concerned it is the release team which has that
delegated authority but i guess if they wanted to
build "official testing" images or any other
collection they surely could, but i'd be a happy
little potato doing as i have been and running from
the testing viewpoint (which can change from moment
to moment).
i consider the release process as a whole which
includes at some point making copies of symlinks to
the package pool and renaming various pathways or
copying things as the whole point of making a
release and then building images and such which do
include the codename and not using things such as
"testing", "sid", "experimental" or "rc-buggy" or
...
i don't really think my viewpoint is far from
the reality of what does happen, but if anyone
from the release team cares to pipe up i'd listen.
songbird
Reply to: