Michel Dänzer wrote: > > On Tue, 2001-10-30 at 10:12, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> > > Am I the only one that favors using the actual names rather than the > > aliases? I used unstable for a while, then, with no warning, > > unstable was bumbed from woody to a very broken sid, and that > > machine got hosed. It took me a long time to figure out what > > happened. Since the aliases can be bumped without warning to the > > next release, I think people should use the proper names for the > > releases in order to stay out of trouble. > > You got confused by a unique event. sid will be (and has been if I'm not > mistaken) unstable forever now. The difference between testing and woody > (or later releases) will be when it becomes stable (or frozen?), where > testing will basically go on as ever, but woody will basically stay the > same and get more outdated each day. It depends what you want, but I > suspect most people want the alias. I wasn't "confused," I was hosed, and it is hardly a unique event. I had another machine that was quite happily working fine, and it had sources.list pointing to "stable." One day "stable" changed to potato and not long after that that machine got hosed too. By that I mean that in dselect, 'update' was run, and a zillion packages were marked to be upgraded, when I definitely didn't want that. At that point you can't use apt-get or dselect for anything after that until you resolve that situation. I spent hours and hours getting that machine back to a point where it would actually run. The customer that owned and relied on the machine was fairly annoyed, and so was I. But I am confused by this reply. I had to read it 3 times before I even partially got it. So, you are saying that sid and unstable will be pseudonyms for each other forever? I'm having trouble with that. If that's the case, then why not just stop using the name sid, it's redundant. And your perspective on the difference between woody and testing, well, it's a lot different than mine, I'll grant that. I tend to think in terms of solid, frozen releases, and the moving target of things in between being things like "testing" or "unstable." If you want that kind of pain, then go there. But yeah, at some point woody will be frozen and released, and then "stable" will be moved to point to it rather than to potato. Won't "testing" be then moved to point to sid at that time or thereabouts? a
