On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 06:28:26PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote: > On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 07:37:35AM +0200, Mike Hommey wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 20, 2007 at 03:17:34PM +1000, Craig Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > IMO, if you need a 'stable' system with some newer packages, you're > > > better off learning how apt's pinning stuff works than bothering with > > > backports. it's not hard.
> > There is a very good reason to prefer backports over unstable/testing > > packages got with pinning: the glibc. > ooh. scary. when you put it like that, i can really understand why > anyone ought to be terrified of apt & pinning. > or maybe, just maybe, anyone running stable+some-from-unstable should > actually test any upgrades on another machine *BEFORE* they install them > on their production servers. new glibc or not. New glibc is a reason why pulling packages from testing/unstable may not be *possible*: each stable release in recent years has bumped the minimum kernel version requirements for glibc, so someone who for whatever reason needs to continue using a 2.4 kernel on their etch system cannot use the glibc from lenny, so a backport would be needed. (FWIW, I think it's fair to consider this a bug of Debian's shlibs system.) > oddly enough, that's precisely what they should do before > upgrading/installing any packages from backports too. and testing. and > before upgrading from an old debian stable release to a brand-new debian > stable release. One thing is testing the package set before deploying it, another thing is having a game plan for getting critical fixes (such as security fixes) applied once deployed. The greater the number of packages you're pulling from testing/unstable, the less you can rely on the availability of targetted security fixes that can be deployed without pulling in other behavior changes. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
