increase apt flexibility (for third party apps)

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sat, Oct 08, 2005 at 09:15:16PM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
> However, it also takes time to use the Debian approach. Look at the
> massive timesink that upgrading GCC can be - it refuses to compile more
> and more code with every release. This code must either be modified to
> compile with the new compiler, or left behind. Where source code breaks,
> sometimes binaries continue to work correctly. 

The fact that binaries continue to work doesn't help much: it's still a
necessity that everything in the distribution build correctly from source.

> It also makes security updates rather inefficient. Look at how
> security.debian.org has been utterly flattened by a simple X server
> update.

security.debian.org has seen many X security updates and survived; my
understanding is that its recent problems are more subtle than simple
overloading.

-- 
 - mdz