%% "Benjamin Sher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
bs> 2) I have alredy downloaded "netinstall" (rc3). I thought that was
bs> for the testing distro.
No. Typically there are never any CD images etc. created for
"testing". "Testing" is not a release; it's a state.
Let me try to make things clearer because I don't think you've quite got
the whole picture.
The Debian release process is not a discrete set of steps, rather it is
a continuum.
When "sarge" (Debian 3.1) is released, it's not like the next day the
Debian project recompiles every one of the 15,000 packages and that is
the start of "etch". No; on the day after "sarge" is released, "etch"
has exactly the same packages as "sarge". Over time, new versions of
packages will be created and those will move into "etch", but not
"sarge" (since "sarge" is stable). So, over time, the contents of the
releases diverge.
In addition to the named releases, there are three (for simplicity's
sake we'll ignore the others) package archives: "stable", "testing", and
"unstable". Packages always exist in one of those three archives. At
any given time, one of those archives corresponds to some named release.
For example, before "sarge" was released the stable distribution was
"woody" (Debian 3.0). So, the "stable" archive contained the packages
that made up the "woody" release. The next release at that time was
"sarge". So, the packages in the "testing" archive were the ones that
were targeted to go into the "sarge" release. The "unstable" archive
always has a release name of "sid"; that never changes. The packages in
"sid", or "unstable", are the ones that developers have built and
proposed to go into the next release.
When "sarge" was released, all the packages in "testing" were migrated
into the "stable" release. Now, the "stable" archive contains the
packages that are in "sarge", and the "testing" archive contains
packages that are targeted for the "etch" release. The "unstable"
release is still nicknamed "sid", like it always is.
So, how to packages move around? When a Debian developer decides to
update a package for ANY reason, she will upload the new version and it
will enter the "unstable" archive. The new version overwrites whatever
package was in "unstable" before.
The package will sit in the archive for some amount of time (10 days or
so; I forget). At the end of that time the package will automatically
be moved into the "testing" archive ("etch"), IF and ONLY IF there are
no critical bugs filed against that version of the package AND if all
packages and versions that this package depends on are already in
"testing".
The new version of the package simply overwrites whatever version was in
"testing" before.
This goes on for a long time. At some point, when the "etch" is getting
ready to release, the migration of packages from "unstable" to "testing"
will be clamped down, testing of the release will happen, and when it's
ready all the packages in "testing" move to the "stable" archive and
"etch" is released.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
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