Staging area for hardy-proposed ?

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 05:51:46PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Ideally, I believe we would be able to automatically handle apt pinning on
> behalf of the user so that if -proposed is enabled, packages are not
> installed from it unless manually selected, with preference given to lower
> package versions in $suite{,-security,-updates}.  With an adequate
> implementation in apt, it seems to me that the update-manager UI
> requirements are simple enough - display a list of "proposed updates", which
> are not selected for installation by default unless a -proposed version of
> the package is already installed.

I think of -proposed as something we would like to encourage people to use,
so that the packages there can be tested by the more adventurous among us
before being released to all Ubuntu users.  That approach argues for using
it wholesale.

However, I can see your use case as well, where some users simply want
easier access to a specific bug fix.

> Then, setting aside the question of whether -proposed should remain enabled
> across upgrades (and I can see a strong argument for disabling it),
> temporary uninstallabilities in -proposed would regardless not be an issue
> for release upgrades, allowing unencumbered use of -proposed as a sandbox.
> 
> Now arguably, this would reduce the amount of testing received by packages
> in -proposed because users would have to explicitly opt in for each package;
> but on the other hand, it would make enabling -proposed to test packages a
> much safer proposition in the first place, letting users easily test only
> those packages that are of direct interest without worrying about unrelated
> regressions.

It would make enabling -proposed a no-op, and it would be very inconvenient
to set up a configuration to test all of the packages (which I maintain is
something we should encourage).

-- 
 - mdz