On Sunday, 19-01-2025 at 01:21 Nicolas George wrote:
> Andy Smith (12025-01-18):
> > One particular consequence of this process of making a stable release is
> > that generally no new features will ever come to the packages in it.
>
> No new *features* is not the point of Debian stable, though, only a side
> effect.
>
> The point is: no changes in behavior.
>
> When you upgrade to a new version of a program, maybe you need to
> replace “whitelist” by “allowlist” because somebody had their fifteen
> minutes of celebrity by pointing it is problematic, otherwise it will
> not start.
>
> Or maybe the program you were running in a crontab will suddenly start
> asking for a confirmation interactively.
>
> Or maybe -D used to mean to not delete all the files and now, for
> consistency it means to delete all the files.
>
> When running Debian stable, you can trust the distribution it will not
> happen: you can upgrade, your scripts will not stop working, your
> config files will not need updating.
>
> Only need to schedule for unexpected software breakage once every two to
> five years.
And this is why I like Debian Stable.
I once maintained a Mail Server, an update introduced a totally different way
to manage configuration files and the change broke the mail server until the
settings were translated to the new settings. I still recall the trauma, lol.
George.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Nicolas George
>
>
