A "progressive" distribution
After reading this nice diskussion with all it's aspects, I want to
complete the mess and suggest a "distribution" called
e.g. "progressive" beetween stable(frozen) and unstable.
As I understood the problem, at the moment, only the stable
distribution is able to be distributed, while the unstable branch is to
unstable and there's no distrubution in between. (To simplify I count the
frozen as stable short before release here.)
When potate becomes stable, a branch called e.g. "progressive" could be
created between the branches "stable" and "unstable". This branch (sorry
for using this term, but I don't like distribution so much) would start
with the modules from stable and subsets of unstable would be added, if
they are usable. The term subset I use for packages that contain together
like one ore more basis packages (libc,xfree,perl,... or just something
like emacs) and those packages depending on this basis package. (Note that
I mean basis as basis of dependencies not basis of the whole or larger
parts of distribution) And usable shell mean, that this package can be
used for average use without the need of Debian-like-tability.
With the next freeze, this "progressive" branch could be copied to
"froozen" and new useable packaged from unstable would go to
"progressive", while those in frozen are kept and only made more
stable.
Doing this there would be a distribution in between, where new versions of
products can reside and easily be used. Someone should be easily use a
snapshot of progressive at an good moment to form a not-so-stable but
up-to-date unofficial release, which could also be called less inoffical,
if there is a common will for this.
Though some advantages this would cause at least two problems:
On the one hand this proposal would prohibit the current way of
naming, because with any release a new distribution is created beetween
stable and unstable, so some branch would change name and the old name
would be used for a possibly totally other branch. So unstable( and
perhaps progressive) had to be without name and just be "unstable".
This coresponds to the loss of a cycle for the whole
distribution. Changes would start in unstable and go through the phases of
unstable, progessive and froozen before they become stable.
On the other hand would this proposal multiply the number of branches to
up to four when there will be the next freeze and
stable,frozen,progressive and unstable beeing all together. This made me
the most headacke, but I think it's not so much of a problem, as many work
to make the frozen version of his package will seriously prevent him from
working so much on the unstable version, that this could become
"usable". So most packages would be either the same in frozen and
progressive or they would be same in progressive and unstable.
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
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