On Wednesday 16 March 2005 18:12, Adrian Bunk wrote: > I already sent two mails [1,2] where I expressed my opinion that dumping > testing might be an option since it's the main reason for the underlying > problems that seem to cause the proposed removal of two third of the > Debian architectures from the Debian releases while it hasn't proven to > bring any real benefits for the release. > > The interesting thing is that while people answered to other parts of > these emails, noone said anything about my points regarding testing - > neither in favor nor against them.
You fail to list and address the points testing claims to address. Therefore I judge this part of your otherwise quite sensible mail ranting I don't have to argue for or against because it has no real content except expressing your personal animosities. Ouch. Seems like I fell into the communication trap myself. Here is a weak try at refuting your proposal: To archive a stable release, arches have to be in sync, there should be only a single version of every library and packages have to be installable. This seem to be the problems I believe testing was designed to solve. Incidentally this almost the list of "problems" you identify being the cause of testings problems. Kinda matches. Going back to a frozen-only release cycle would ignore these problems until half a year before the release. Then the same work that is now done for testing would have to be done anyways: arches brought to sync, libraries transitioned and package installability guaranteed. Thus I make two observations: 1) Only dropping testing would increase the risk (by delaying the detection of the problems) without noticeable reductions in amount of work (if Debian still aims at a 12-18 month release cycle) 2) Providing a better alternative is more efficiently done by those dissatisfied with the status-quo (i.e. you) as opposed to those who worked hard to establish the status-quo as solution to their problems (i.e. ftp-master and release team). Thank you for still caring about Debian! Regards, David -- - hallo... wie gehts heute? - *hust* gut *rotz* *keuch* - gott sei dank kommunizieren wir über ein septisches medium ;) -- Matthias Leeb, Uni f. angewandte Kunst, 2005-02-15
