When stability is pointless

[Osamu Aoki]

Hi,

On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 01:26:31AM +0000, Sam Kuper wrote:
> When stability is pointless
> ===========================
> 
> Many Linux distributions (and other software environments too) use
> package managers to facilitate the installation, upgrading and
> uninstallation of software packages as needed. At least, that's the
> idea.

Debian acknowledges this problem and we have 2 special archives:
 volatile
 volatile-sloppy

You do not seem to use these.

Please check:
 http://people.debian.org/~osamu/pub/getwiki/html/ch03.en.html#debianarchivebasics
 http://www.debian.org/volatile/

(Also if you need new feature, backports.org is place to use.)

> Why have package managers?
> --------------------------
> 
> Are package managers necessary? Well, no. 

What????  We need this to keep consistency, ...

> One way of managing software
> is simply to install individual software programs/libraries as needed,
> and allow each item to handle its own updating or uninstallation (or
> even just leave that to the user to do manually). 

Within stable Debian and security updates and volatile, this is supported.

I do not know what you mean by "manually", though.

> That's pretty much how Windows handles things. 

Not really.  We know some softwares works on security updated system.

...
> An example
> ----------
> 
> Here is my scenario. I have a server running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS: a
> "stable", recent release of a Debian-based Linux distribution. I wish
> to install a security-related program called "psad" (short for "Port
> Scan Attack Detector) on that server. However, the stable package of
> psad for Ubuntu 8.04 turns out to house version 2.1 of psad. That
> wouldn't bother me, except that… I can't set it up!

This is Ubuntu problem.  Please ask them.
 
> The reason I'm having difficulty setting it up is that the
> documentation on installing psad refer not to version 2.1 but to
> version 2.1.4, which requires setting up differently to 2.1. 

Debian usually supply NEWS or README.Debian to adress these issue.

I have to say Documentation is generally weak point on Debian.
...

Osamu