[conspire] Fwd: wheezy is OUT. tonight. Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: BAD meeting for 2013-05 (and mini-installfests, and ...)

[Tony Godshall]

> Coolio.  In case people don't know, the release process is implemented
> at a mechanical level by just repointing the 'stable' symlink on the
> package repositories (and the 'testing' symlink, please creating an
> 'oldstable' one, etc.).  In this case, 'stable' has been relinked from
> squeeze to wheezy, and 'testing' was pointed to new branch jessie,
> recently forked from the unstable=sid one:

OTOH, if you were pointed at stable, suddenly your apt-get update
brings in a whole lot of changes, and there are places past which
apt-get install breaks and you really want to do an apt-get
dist-upgrade.  Testing, not so much, as it is a rolling version that
lags sid only by mechanically passing packages that don't break things
after a certain number of days IIRC.

If you track stable, you are presumably averse to uncontrolled
breakage, and you might be well advised to point by name or by version
number (was was referenced in /etc/apt/sources.list as stable would be
referenced now as squeeze or Debian6.0.7 if you want to keep from
being moved to 7.0) and plan your dist-upgrade for when you have
reviewed and planned.

> rmoen at borgia:~$ lftp ftp.debian.org:/debian/dists
> cd ok, cwd=/debian/dists
> lftp ftp.debian.org:/debian/dists> ls
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            7 Feb 23 10:24 Debian6.0.7 -> squeeze
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            6 May 04 10:57 Debian7.0.0 -> wheezy
> -rw-rw-r--    1 1176     1176          728 May 04 11:56 README
> drwxrwsr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:25 experimental
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:25 jessie
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:24 jessie-proposed-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            7 May 04 10:47 oldstable -> squeeze
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           24 May 04 10:47 oldstable-proposed-updates -> squeeze-proposed-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           15 May 04 11:31 oldstable-updates -> squeeze-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           23 May 04 10:52 proposed-updates -> wheezy-proposed-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           12 Aug 04  2008 rc-buggy -> experimental
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:25 sid
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 04 12:32 squeeze
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176       548864 May 08 14:24 squeeze-proposed-updates
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:24 squeeze-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            6 May 04 10:51 stable -> wheezy
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           16 May 05 07:59 stable-backports -> wheezy-backports
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           23 May 04 10:52 stable-proposed-updates -> wheezy-proposed-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           14 May 04 10:52 stable-updates -> wheezy-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            6 May 04 10:51 testing -> jessie
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176           23 May 04 10:53 testing-proposed-updates -> jessie-proposed-updates
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 1176     1176            3 Nov 10  2007 unstable -> sid
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 04 12:51 wheezy
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:24 wheezy-backports
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:24 wheezy-proposed-updates
> drwxr-sr-x    5 1176     1176         4096 May 08 14:24 wheezy-updates
> lftp ftp.debian.org:/debian/dists> quit
> rmoen at borgia:~$
>
> All this having been said, if you as a Debian user just Do the Right Thing and
> leave /etc/apt/sources.list[.d/*] pointed to your choice of 'stable', 'testing',
> or 'unstable', then you can safely ignore -- largely -- the whole release process
> and forget which Toy Story character is which.
>
>
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-- 
Best Regards.
This is unedited.