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by evook 3181 days ago
sid (still in Development)
4 comments

While true, I guess the point was that it's misleading to refer to sid as Debian's "experimental" release, since Debian actually has a "release" referred to as experimental and it is not sid.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental

But sid isn't referred to as an experimental release. The experimental release is more or less an voluntary option for the devs to use or not.

> Some packages/developers don't use experimental, they just put the new versions in unstable

I began using Debian c. 1998 and I've never heard that.
"It is sometimes wrongly backronymed as "Still In Development""

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#Which_Toy_Story_chara...

sid is said to be unstable but I have experienced the opposite of that. In fact, testing is way more unstable than sid.
That is not true at all, and i can prove to you by showing just one bugreport:

An update to network-manager broke dns for everyone, the broken package stayed about 5 hours on unstable repository, if i recall correctly. This broken package never got even close to being on testing.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=784587

On the other hand, if a serious issue is detected after a specific version has already migrated to testing, the package will never (automatically) migrate to testing as long as new blocking issues keep being found. This can make testing rather unpleasant.

Of course, the same two-week wait time also applies to any regular bugfix, unless it's manually migrated to testing. Thus, one bug that affected unstable but not testing is not proof at all. Personally, I'm happier with unstable than testing on my laptop and work desktop.

> On the other hand, if a serious issue is detected after a specific version has already migrated to testing, the package will never (automatically) migrate to testing as long as new blocking issues keep being found. This can make testing rather unpleasant.

That is a valid example on what can make testing unpleasant, but still holds my point as this is a lot more uncommon than sid breakages, and also the package is removed from testing automatically a few days after any RC bug is filled, which prevent new testing installations of this broken package.

> Of course, the same two-week wait time also applies to any regular bugfix, unless it's manually migrated to testing. Thus, one bug that affected unstable but not testing is not proof at all. Personally, I'm happier with unstable than testing on my laptop and work desktop.

The default wait time is 5 days (medium urgency), high urgency fixes (which fixes RC bugs on testing) waits 2 days before being migrated to testing. But you don't need to believe me, see for yourself:

Release critical bugs affecting sid (excluding packages that are already removed from testing, so we don't see any obsolete package that is to be removed from unstable too)[1]: 539

Release critical bugs affecting testing[2]: 453

[1]https://udd.debian.org/bugs/?release=sid&notbuster=ign&merge...

[2]https://udd.debian.org/bugs/?release=buster&notbuster=ign&me...