[LUNI] Using (Debian) Unstable packages in Woody

[Martin Maney]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 09:41:47AM -0500, Robert C. Ramsdell wrote:
> I tried the backport option, and am now happily using gnucash 1.8.x.  Next
> the printer drivers...  

Cups or the hard way?

> Martin, I did not consider the option of upgrading to unstable.  If the
> backports work for me, I probably will stick with them.  One more question.

I think I mispoke - it was probably testing I was running on the
desktop machine last spring, because it segued into Woody-released
without a hiccup.  I'm sure it was unstable that I ran on that less
critical machine prior to that, though.  I haven't had time for that
this cycle, so I can't speak to the condition of either testing or
unstable at this point except vaguely.  But "unstable" is rarely more
than mildly annoying, and the annoyances tend to get fixed quickly.

One big plus: there's something new just about every day!  :-)

> Is there a testing right now?  I was using woody when it was in the testing
> stage and had few problems.

Testing is a really interesting idea, but there seem to be some
problems.  For one thing, it is not very well served by the security
team's fixes - those have to trickle down from unstable the same as any
other update there.  I wouldn't even consider testing on that ground
alone for any machine exposed to a hostile environment.  Then there's
the tendency, which seems to have been rather worse this cycle than I
remember from Woody's infancy, to have huge swathes of packages unable
to trickle down to it because of one or two stubborn issues (perhaps
most often issues specific to what I cannot but view as platforms of
secondary importance).  This seems likely to be a recurring problem,
especially early in a release's development cycle when large changes
are likely to be made.  I certainly saw little if any sign of that
during Woody's last six months in testing.

-- 
There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a
well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured,
on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him
to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart,
and always to plead it successfully.  -- Anthony Trollope