On Sat, Oct 23, 2004 at 10:44:58PM +0200, Gergely Nagy wrote: > > It may sound a bit radical, but core points have been mentioned in the > > thread already. I suggest to do it in a more radical way: > > > > - unstable lockdown in the freeze > > - drop Testing and concentrate on work instead of wasting time on > > synching stuff. This eliminates the need for testing-security. See > > the last part of the paper for details. > > Doing this would result in many users who currently run testing fall > back to stable + backports or switch to another distro (ubuntu being a > likely candidate), which in turn, would result in less bugreports and a > less stable distribution. I, for one, wouldn't run unstable on my > parents' box, whereas testing proved to be quite reliable there. >
Absolutely agree. DON'T drop testig. I'm using testing since ages here on a good deal of boxes with different configurations and used by naive users without big gotchas. It helps me to check problems in -sarge- without using sid on any computers, but for my personal ones. It helps a lot in debugging and testing upgrades from woody. It helps in creating custom distros starting from an archive in a reasonable state. And, about the general 'shape' of testing: are you conscious that testing is _now_ in very better general shape than other 'released' distros? Are you consciuous that _our_ requirements about level of quality is higher than that of many blasonated (also $$$) distros? > Freezing unstable will get you nothing compared to what we have now. > Those who don't care about a release, will not care that way either, > just their complaints will get louder and more frequent. Those who are > willing to do the work neccessary for the release are already trying to. > I agree too. I add also that dropping testing would not help in having up-to-date versions in stable. Simply, we would have a loooong freeze in sid, due to the current size of archive (i.e. package per developer) and number of RCs. Versions would be obsolete in any way. > Remember, Debian is a volunteer project, you cannot force people to do > something they do not want to. > > > - about the "filtering updates for frozen" - yes, some additional > > manpower is required but that work must be done. The problems with > > Testing synchronisation are not of pure technical nature, they are > > social problem, and so they should be solved by people and not > > scripts. > > Yes, testing synchronisation is not a purely technical matter. Nor is it > purely social, so the testing scripts, which automatically keep stuff in > sync, are a real help. On top of that, package maintainers coordinating > with each other (the social part) is welcomed too, and should be > encouraged. (And those who break a transition should be kicked in the > ass, so they won't try it again :P) > > I firmly believe that fixing the problems with testing (mainly > testing-security at this point in time) would be MUCH better than > dropping testing and freezing unstable before the next release. > You are my hero :-P -- Francesco P. Lovergine
