[vox] A Criticism of Debian Testing

[Don Armstrong]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Bob Scofield wrote:
> But there is a big downside for this otherwise wonderful updating in
> testing. It is the fact that some of my favorite applications get
> removed in the upgrading process. Examples are K3b and Digikam. K3b
> just disappeared when KDE was upgraded from 3.3 to 3.4. I don't know
> when I lost Digikam, but I assume it went during the KDE upgrade.

This is why you have to pay attention to what the upgrade process is
doing.

Blindly running 'apt-get dist-upgrade' or similar is bound to leave
you in pain.

Instead, use aptitude or similar to drive the upgrade process, making
sure that the upgrade you've planed isn't going to remove anything
that you'd really like to have installed.

> Digikam, and I believe K3b also, are available for both the stable
> and unstable versions, but not testing. I assume that these programs
> will move from unstable to testing, but it is irritating to say the
> least to see these programs simply disappear from one's computer.

They don't just "disappear"... you'll get prompted when you run
apt-get or aptitude about packages being removed.

In the case of k3b and digikam, they have both been removed from
testing to facilitate the KDE 3.3->3.4 transition, primary because of
#335577 in k3b's case, and not being rebuilt fast enough in the case
of digikam.

http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=k3b
http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=digikam


Don Armstrong

-- 
Junkies were all knitted together in a loose global macrame, the
intercontinental freemasonry of narcotics.
 -- Bruce Sterling, _Holy Fire_ p257

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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