On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 02:32:11PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 11:46:19AM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 02, 2005 at 10:40:40PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
> > >
> > > So, until some time in the far future, people should not say to
> > > newbies that release code names and release status names ('stable',
> > > 'testing', etc.) are interchangeable. They are not. Existing support
> > > for release code names is, in fact, quite restricted by comparison.
It looks as if the advice I gave below may only be valid for
sources.list. I apologise if I was misleading, but see further discussion.
- hendrik
> >
> > People that want stability had better use the release code names, otherwise
> > they will suddenly be dragged into the future every few years and
> > have little control over it.
> >
> > People who want frequent releases had better specify the release
> > status name (testing) or every few years their system will gradually
> > start going out of date.
> >
> > People who break toys can use either. Aren't "sid" and "unstable"
> > really interchangable?
> >
>
> Yes, but that is a vacuous test. Sid/unstable _always_ contains the
> packages with the highest version number. It _never_ needs to be
> specified as the preferred release, if it is the release that you wish
> to follow. On the other hand, if you wish to follow mainly testing,
> and have sid/unstable in your sources.list so that you can pick up a
> few packages before they reach testing, using 'etch' in either
> apt.conf or apt/preferences does _not_ prevent the automatic upgrade
> of _all_ packages from testing to unstable. IMHO, very few newbies
> really want to track unstable, though some may want to grab one or two
> packages from it.
>
> When you do grab a package from sid/unstable, you must use 'unstable'
> on the command line to apt-get (you might think you can use the version,
> but sid/unstable does not have a version number)
>
> In short, even for sid/unstable, the release code name and the 'Archive name'
> are _not_ equivalent.
>
> It is easy to run your own tests of this. If it matters to you, you should
> run your own tests. The wording of the documentation is difficult to
> understand, but not incorrect. If doesn't matter to you, and/or you have
> not run some careful tests of your understanding, you should refrain from
> giving advice.
Thanks for the correction/clarification. I thought I understood,
but now I know I don't.
Is it that "sid" and "unstable" mean the same on /etc/source.list,
because the two names are permanently paired off
(unlike "woody"="stable", which became false recently),
but they have different meaning or validity in apt.conf
and apt/preferences?
-- hendrik
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