Re: Beta-testing and the glibc 2.1 (Was: Missing ldd? Have libc6 on hold? Get ldso from slink...
On Wed, Mar 17, 1999 at 02:10:20PM -0600, renfro@tntech.edu wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Seth M. Landsman wrote:
>
> > > If you need your machine for "real work" then you shouldn't be running
> > > unstable.
> >
> > If debian unstable isn't tested on machines used for real work,
> > debian is going to end up a toy distribution which is only suitable for
> > work on systems which aren't appropriate for real work.
>
> If your only PC to do "real work" on is running an ever-changing,
> developer-suited version of Debian, then you're really asking for some
> "mission-critical" failures. Not having at least a fairly recent backup
> before upgrading critical libraries is ridiculous, and it doesn't take a
> developer to know that (I offer myself as evidence on that point).
Much as I'd love to have backups of my system, it's just not feasible.
I run unstable because I want to test Debian, find bugs, run the latest
programs. I read bugs and debian-devel and devel-changes so that I am aware
of potential problems.
Severe breakages are rare, normally you just need to downgrade a package or
two, and that's fine.
We really need these test areas to become more standardised - less of the
"grab it from my home directory" and more "it's in staging/glibc2.1" or
"staging/perl5.005".
Currently getting packages from Debian unstable/experimental/staging(all
over the place)/gnome-debs/enlightenment/etc is in a mess. People should be
able to go to _one_ place for all work done by Debian developers.
Most of this stems from Debian getting _very_ large quicker than the
underlying systems can cope. It looks like the right noises and steps are
being made - two years ago "apt" wasn't known at all, and now :-)
Adrian
email: adrian.bridgett@zetnet.co.uk, http://www.poboxes.com/adrian.bridgett
Windows NT - Unix in beta-testing. PGP key available on public key servers
Avoid tiresome goat sacrifices -=- use Debian Linux http://www.debian.org
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