On Thu, Mar 31, 2022 at 06:57:04PM +0200, Erwan David wrote: > Alas, you cannot always choose exactly what you use a must comprimise a > little. For virtualbox one of my interrogations is that the package in sid > is very good, is stable, but it never goes to testing. There ust be a > reason, but I could not find it.
Start at <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox>. After a few pages of unstable uploads, you get to <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/virtualbox/news/?page=3> which has a link to <https://tracker.debian.org/news/1038163/virtualbox-removed-from-testing/> That page contains a bug number, so you can go to <https://bugs.debian.org/794466> (manually constructing the URL) to read more about that bug. One of the things that may confuse some people is that they don't understand what Debian testing actually *is*. Some people think it's a rolling release, and that they can run it to "get packages that are newer than the ones in stable, with a slight risk of bugs". That is NOT what it is. Debian testing is the staging ground for the next stable release. It's the next stable release, being built in real time, warts and all. A package that has been deemed unsuitable for stable will therefore never go into testing. It will never be part of a (new) stable release, so there's no reason it should ever appear in testing. I'm not sure exactly why it's even being uploaded to unstable. But I guess if some Debian developer wants to spend their time doing that, they're permitted. Maybe they keep hoping that upstream will change their policy some day? Or that a different corporation will buy the rights to it, and change the policy that way? I don't know.
