On 03/06/2015 06:12 AM, Jaromír Mikeš wrote:
Hello, I was exited when I heard couple of years ago about rolling release debian - CUT. But there are not news on this topic anywhere ... is this idea still living? best regards mira
Hello.This isn't a direct answer to your question about CUT, but might be of some help.
I've been using Debian testing as a kind of rolling release since Lenny on my four most important systems. (I just use "testing" in place of the code word -- lenny, squeeze, wheezy, jessie, etc. --in /etc/apt/sources.list.)
On rare occasions I've had to scramble for a few minutes to regain lost functions when a package upgrade has resulted in malfunction of one part of the system or another, but none of the systems has ever been down-and-out for more than the few minutes it takes to find out what's wrong and reconfigure to fix it. This has even been the case when it comes time for the distro upgrade that happens when testing becomes the new stable.
I'd suggest that it's best to upgrade a system configured in this manner daily. This makes the changes more incremental instead of sweeping. Longer periods between upgrades might make troubleshooting a new issue pretty tough to do since you'd have a lot more package changes to sort through to find a culprit.
Reading the development and announcement lists is very helpful in knowing what to expect. And using apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs along with aptitude's interactive TUI during each daily upgrade has made the upgrading and troubleshooting process very logical and easy to do, in my experience.
Obviously, during a freeze (like the one for Jessie now) you see far fewer package upgrades which are much less likely to cause functional issues.
The braver souls run Sid / experimental as a kind of rolling release. That, I think, requires quite a bit more savvy in the use of techniques like pinning and other manipulations of apt's configuration. But it provides a more consistent access to later versions of all of the software packages and their new features.
So, maybe you can set up your own personal rolling release? It is more work on a routine basis that running stable, but I've enjoyed doing it.
Good luck! JP