Re: unstable is "unstable"; stable is "outdated"
On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 04:03:40PM -0800, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On 1 Feb 2002, Jeff S Wheeler wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 2002-02-01 at 01:42, Jason Lim wrote:
> > > We have production boxes running unstable with no problem. Needed to run
> > > unstable because only unstable had some new software, unavailable in
> > > stable. Its a pity stable gets so outdated all the time as compared to
> > > other distros like Redhat and Caldera (stable still on 2.2 kernel), but
> > > thats a topic for a separate discussion.
> >
> > This is really a shame. It's my biggest complaint with Debian by far.
> > The tools work very well, but the release cycle is such that you can't
> > use a "stable" revision of the distribution and have modern packages
> > available.
>
> Some up-to-date packages are located in the "testing" distribution.
>
> This probably has been (and currently) discussed elsewhere. I think the
> problems are that there are too many packages and too many dependencies.
Yep, the old exponential dependancy problem...
> Maybe a solution would be to have a fourth collection (beside stable,
> testing and unstable): "mini". It would not have thousands of packages.
> For example, it would only have about 150 to 300 packages. Only new
> packages are added if a vote approves.
This sounds a little bit like what I think is needed; Debian needs to be
partitioned into sub-distro's with their own independant release schedules.
> What do you think of having a mini distribution that limits the number of
> packages allowed?
Why not just call it "debian-core". Then you can have "debian-gnome",
"debian-kde", "debian-xfree" etc. Each of these can be implemented as
seperate distro's with their own releases, using Packages files pointing
into the pool.
This paritions the dependancies, making it all easier to manage, speeding
the release cycle and potentialy allowing people to mix-n-match stable-core
with unstable-gnome if they wish.
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