[Pkg-octave-devel] Updating the packages on RC-unrelated issues

[Sébastien Villemot]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh at octave.org> writes:

> I wish Debian's release cycle didn't change the de-facto meaning of
> unstable and experimental during freeze time. I wish that during
> freeze time, a new wheezy-proposed or whatever branch was created and
> unstable and experimental kept the same meaning.
>
> Sadly, instead experiemental becomes the new unstable and unstable
> becomes "wheezy-backports" or "wheezy-proposed". It has to be done
> this way. It's how everyone else in Debian does it. So yes, this is
> what happens.

The fundamental reason is that packages that enter wheezy via unstable
get more testing (10 days) than packages that enter via
testing-proposed-updates (which are basically not tested by anyone else
than the developer). If we want a quality release we have to use
unstable as a staging area for stable during the freeze.

A second reason, which is more social than technical, is that developers
may be more inclined to fix RC bugs in other packages during the freeze
if they cannot use unstable as a playground for the latest release of
their pet package.

So yes, this is more or less unavoidable, even if I understand (and
share to some extent) your frustration.

-- 
 .''`.    Sébastien Villemot
: :' :    Debian Maintainer
`. `'     http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
  `-      GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
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