On 02/09/15 11:41 AM, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote:
On Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 10:21:47AM -0400, Gary Dale wrote:
I thought testing was supposed to be where packages were mainly working and
the sid and experimental where were packages were tested to make sure they
actually worked.
Not really. "The testing distribution is generated automatically by taking
packages from unstable if they satisfy certain criteria. Those criteria
should ensure a good quality for packages within testing." [0]
That doesn't guarantee the testing is usable at any single point of time,
and the packages can even be temporarily removed from testing. This only
guarantees that packages in testing are not RC-buggy and pass other
technical checks. Packages in Debian are not "tested to make sure they
actually worked" other than by the users. So, during large transitions
both unstable and testing may be temporarily unusable. Users who want
continuously working systems should use stable (or expect to make efforts
to deal with problems that happen in testing and unstable).
[0]:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch04.en.html#sec-dists
I know I've been using Debian for a long time. That's why I'm amazed
that something this bad is being put into testing. When KDE4 came along,
it at least was fairly stable and usable (if incomplete) before it was
moved to testing. If I wanted bleeding edge software that didn't
necessarily work, I would be running sid or pulling stuff from experimental.
As your quote says "Those criteria should ensure a good quality for
packages within testing." Putting out a broken desktop can in no way be
considered "good quality". I run testing because I want to test
software, not to get mad at the developers who volunteer their time to
get the packages ready for prime time. In this case the process seems to
have misfired by bringing us the Plasma desktop when it is nowhere near
ready.
This is the third time in the last few weeks that I've been forced to
use Gnome because KDE couldn't do even basic desktop stuff. I suggest
that testing should revert to KDE4, if that is possible, and wait until
KDE5 achieves some level of stability before inflicting it on us again.
Let the brave souls who run sid do what they, not I, signed up for.
