On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 02:32:14PM -0400, Mike Branda wrote:
> So all this dependency talk and latest packages stuff got me thinking.
>
> I can add a SuSE 9.3 ftp installation source to my SuSE 9.2 box and get
> packages that are newer than are in the 9.2 ftp dirs but obviously that
> "breaks away from the distro" per se. Does Debian Mandrake or any other
> distro for that matter do this too?? i.e. create packages up to a
> certain version for a source then when the next stable revision of the
> distro comes, stop updating packages for the first (with the exception
> of security packages of course)?? For example, now that SuSE 9.3 is
> out, as Chuck is dealing with, the only evolution package available in
> the 9.2 ftp path is evolution-2.0.1-6.4. This will not change unless a
> security vulnerability is uncovered for the package. You have to either
> upgrade to 9.3 to get the 2.1.1 version or point your Installation
> source to the updated ftp dir for the latest packages. Which of course
> wants to update a lot of stuff once you do!! When you apt-get in Debian
> (probably sid or whatever the testing ver. is), is it always bleeding
> edge or do they stop doing the latest after a while and move on to the
> next release??
Debian Stable "freezes" at some point, and the only changes are security
and minor bug updates. Since the Debian release cycle has recently been
on the order of years, packages in stable can be quite old. Testing is
the staging point for the next stable, and changes a lot over time.
Packages are still not bleeding edge, but are judged to be stable enough
to be in testing. When testing is deemed "fully cooked", it slides over
to stable. Unstable is where "bleeding edge" packages enter the
distribution. "Unstable" is kind of a misnomer; it isn't really
unstable, just less tested than testing. Once a package is deemed to be
stable enough in "unstable", it slides over into the "testing"
distribution. Most people probably run Testing. I believe security
updates as a separate thing only happen for stable. Testing and
unstable get the security updates in the normal course of updating the
packages.
There are additional sources for Debian packages, like backports.org.
These are even later versions of packages than what's in the normal
Debian archives. But it's really designed to augment what's in the
regular Debian distributions. I don't know if Knoppix and others like it
offer similar sources for updated packages. One of the hopes was that
Mepis would provide an apt-getable source for more recent packages than
were available in Debian. But Wayne hasn't apparently taken the time to
set up such soures.
Another problem that emerges from time to time with Debian is that major
packages will become unavailable due to bugs. This can be a case where a
package relies on another package which has unresolved bugs. If the
upstream developers don't see fit to fix the bugs in a reasonable amount
of time, Debian will pull both packages from the distribution until
things are worked out. This happened a couple of years ago with KDE. For
months, KDE was not available under Debian because of some unresolved
issues. If you were updating Debian regularly, and weren't careful, you
could end up with a system which was missing KDE. This doesn't happen
all the time, but when it does, it can be a major PITA.
Debian also has a great deal of internal politics. There are factions of
Debian who believe that nothing which is not GPL should be included in
their distro. For example, the GPL allows for alteration of software,
and the redistribution of the altered version. This turns out to be a
bad thing for RFCs, which shouldn't be altered as to content, given the
nature of an RFC. The result is that the RFCs were (I believe) dropped
from the main Debian distribution. Every few weeks there are
discussions/arguments about what should or shouldn't be included and
what licenses are or aren't acceptable, etc.
On the up side, Debian is designed to allow you to upgrade without
having to reinstall. This is something other distributions still don't
do that well; they don't test the upgrade path as well, and in some
cases make it exceptionally difficult to upgrade (e.g. SuSE, which I
believe only makes available ISOs online, not individual package
archives). This explains why so many other distros are built on Debian.
Anyway, that was _way_ more than you wanted to know. I only mention
these things because you've been around for a while, and if you're
looking at Debian, you should know the pluses and minuses. For a
completely new user, much of this won't affect them-- they won't be
tinkering and continually updating.
Paul
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