[wellylug] Debian and latest XFree86

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <20030605115444.GA7039 at fake>, Richard Hector writes:
>On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 09:59:08PM +1200, Andrew Garrett wrote:
>> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html#s-default-version
>
>Yes - though somebody (reputable, though I can't remember the name) posted a
>warning on debian-user a while ago that this was not a silver bullet, and
>could have nasty consequences - it gets messy when the sarge package depends
>on a newer version of libc than is in woody - people have accidentally
>half-upgraded their systems, and it can be hard to undo.

I have seen some Debian systems where it is no longer possible to
install any packages at all, due to the dependency database having
"incompatible" versions of various things after someone's followed this
some-packages-from-stable, some-from-testing (or some-from-unstable)
approach.  While it's fixable, typically the only "quick" way to fix it
is to upgrade everything to testing (or unstable), and hope for the best.

This is one of the main reasons I've concentrated on using backports,
and generally compile my own backports of things for the smaller/simpler
cases.  Yes, it has problems of its own (in particular you just became
responsible for your own security fixes!), but in my experience they are
less pervasive problems (eg, any version dependencies are issolated to
just the cluster of packages you've backported, and you don't usually
end up depending on a new libc package or something like that).

For simple packages with few, if any, dependencies, a back port can be
as simple as giving apt-get an appropriate debian source line, and asking 
it to download the source, build it, and install the package.  

All that said, particularly on production servers, I almost always run
only stable packages, with very few, if any, backports.  The software
might not be bleeding edge, but it's generally in a can-depend-on-it-
running-a-long-time-with-few-surprises sort of condition.

Ewen