On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 12:29:55PM -0400, Peter Hoist wrote: > I am enjoying Debian's testing branch as a reasonably stable and up-to-date > 'rolling' release,
It's not. > So the question is, why not cut a release branch every two years, and at > the same time keep the unstable/testing alive? You misunderstand Debian's release model at a fundamental level. The purpose of testing, and even unstable, is not "to give our users a rolling release". Your perception of them as such a thing is where the error lies. The purpose of unstable (and more recently, testing) is to prepare for the release of the next stable version. Everything about them is geared toward that goal. Packages are uploaded to testing not because they've got that new package smell, and not because having higher version numbers increases your score. It's because the developers believe the newer package will add benefit to the next stable release. Let me say this again, to be clear: packages are uploaded to unstable because that's how they become eligible for the next stable release. The unstable and testing branches themselves are just places where you can go to test the next stable release before it happens, find the bugs, and report them. The "slushy" effect (unstable mostly freezing along with testing) is simply a side effect of the fact that All Of Debian is preparing for the next release. All efforts are on fixing the release-critical bugs in the packages, so they don't get removed from testing (and therefore from the next stable release). Uploading a new package to unstable during this time would backfire in multiple ways: not only does it take away developer time that could have been spent fixing the bugs in testing, but any chance of such a new unstable package migrating into testing during the freeze would throw everything off. If you want your raw-and-bloody new package stream to continue faster, you can help by reporting bugs, or even by offering fixes if your skill set allows it. Advocating for "hey, let's split the Debian developer community into two pieces right before a release" is not likely to achieve your goals.
