Re: What's wrong with debian?

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Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 20:08:12 -0500
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

> Quoting Hodgins Family <ehodgins@telusplanet.net>:
>
> > These three points lead me to suggest some things: 1) Why not
> > dump the concept of a "Release", altogether? (I'm referring to
> > Potato vs Woody vs Sarge vs whoever is next.) 2) What we are
> > actually running is either i) Debian Stable, ii) Debian Testing
> > or iii) Debian Unstable or iv )a mixture. All are current up to
> > whatever date we last ran apt-update && apt-upgrade.

A-men!

> > 3) Debian Stable (up to whatever date we last ran apt-update &&
> > apt-upgrade) is what (maybe) what Mike was referring to.
> >
> > Statements such as "I'm waiting for Sarge" become irrelevant.

<SNIP/>

>
> I think that we need to consider the idea of "service packs." That
> is, we have a stable release and periodically a set of packages (I
> am thinking of a server-targeted approach here) can be upgraded
> for functionality, instead of only security. For example, it would
> be really nice if Woody had supported Postfix 2.1, Apache2, Cyrus2,
> and so on.
>
> I think that there are several potential benefits:
>
> 1) The core libraries (libc, and bretheren) can remain as they are.
> Other applications can be upgraded to more modern versions.
> Imagine if Mozilla 1.6 or 1.7 were in Woody instead of 1.0. The
> issue of abandoning security support would not have been raised.

This, I suspect, is going to be a huge issue. The differences among
glibc 5 and 6, f'rinstance. To say nothing about the related issues
of /which/ gcc release will compile the source. Right now, a package
might compile clean (and even work) with gcc-3.3 and glibc++6 for
Testing, but it couldn't be dropped into Stable unless it compiled
clean and ran with gcc-2.95 and libc 5. Alternatively, would you call
it a ServicePack to drop gcc-3.? and libs into Current-Woody, and no
longer support gcc-2.95? Hell, a user can still pull down gcc-2.72!
I doubt the gcc team puts much effort into problems in those releases
. . . they are looking with baited breath at 4.0. [I may be behind
the times here].

Commercial vendors have often found it neccessary as a practical
matter to limit just how far back they can support -- usually 2
generations. Of course, that doesn't mean they would sell you the
Now-2. I guess backports.org would be our friend for stuff like that.

>
> 2) Or what about the very old version of some of the server
> software. Most of it no longer has upstream support and has been
> replaced by solid and stable versions released upstream. Seriously,
> try finding information about configuring Postfix 1.1.
>
> 3) 1 and 2 combine to give a lower maintenance burden for the
> individual package maintainers and the security team.
>
> 4) It keeps the distribution from lagging too far behind.
>
> 5) It also helps to smooth the transition between major stable
> releases.

Actually, I would like to just set up my apt target as, say, "Testing"
to represent the degree of risk I can deal with. Then let the latest
and greatest of everything percolate down from the bleeding edge into
"Testing" as it comes to satisfy that degree of stability.

>
> I am not trying to say that we should do the service pack thing
> since everyone else does. However, I think that given the size of
> Debian currently (and the resistance to targeted releases for
> Dekstop, Server, etc.) I think that taking a group of carefully
> selected packages, that have been evaluated and tested for
> regression, and placing them into stable would be a Good Thing(TM).
>
>
>
> Besides, I don't think that this is too far from where we are now
> with the idea of point releases (like 3.0r4). I just think that it
> would represent loosening of the criteria for inclusion of
> packages in such point releases without a compromise on quality.
>
> I am interested in hearing what others have to say about this.
>
> -Roberto
>
I would also wish to have the degree-of-risk selectable on a
per-package basis. For example, I tolerate a lot of risk on
mozilla-firefox and -thunderbird ... I install the nightlies every
week. That is emphatically NOT the case for the kernel, for example.
I'm using a backport version 2.4.26 because it's the only one I've
gotten to work correctly with my darned nVidia hardware. I like to be
very deliberate about changes at that level, because they can be such
a pain to undo.

Anyway, this is basically a +1 for the service pack concept, and for
untying release "names" from risk-level (Stable, Gamma, Beta -- to use
Xemacs terminology; Stable, Testing, Something-else here).

-- 
David A. Cobb, Software Engineer, Public Access Advocate
"By God's Grace, I am a Christian man; by my actions a great sinner."
-- The Way of a Pilgrim: R.French, Tr.
Life is too short to tolerate crappy software!
-- 
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