> In §6.1.3, debian-handbook encourages users of testing/unstable to include > stable, testing and unstable in their sources.list.
> This sets users up for some very spectacular problems. Eh? What's wrong with mixing these? Having some packages with stable then some from testing/unstable is usually safer than pure testing/unstable. And when it's not -- well, that's a bug. Bugs are supposed to get reported and fixed... Especially bugs where dependencies are wrong, and Debian tends to do a pretty good job here. > Mixed stable/testing systems are supported only in the sense that the > upgrade should be possible. Mixed stable/unstable systems are completely > unsupported. The only mixed systems that are unsupported are: * skipping a release: oldstable + testing/unstable * Debian + some other distro Mixing stable with testing/unstable has been supported and recommended both at the end of previous millenium and quite recently. This text in the handbook doesn't come from thin air. Sure, the addition of backports reduced the need to directly pull packages from testing/unstable, but only a small portion of packages get backported. > Users will also install packages from stable but be unable to get security > updates either to those packages or to other packages from > testing/unstable owing to the particular mix they have -- conflicts/breaks > will leave them held back. Nope, they do get security updates from unstable, the same way anyone running pure unstable gets. As for testing, this is the very reason we have the "urgency" field -- so important fixes (security or not) migrate faster. In fact, mixing oldstable+stable is the key to any reasonable upgrade on a server that's not compartmentalized (by xen or containers): you upgrade daemons one by one, testing if they still work right. Same for stable+testing/unstable. Meow! -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ A dumb species has no way to open a tuna can. ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ A smart species invents a can opener. ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ A master species delegates.
