Re: [READTHIS] Familiar v0.5 and the Unstable feed

On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 02:56:13PM -0700, Alexander Guy wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 04:39:25PM -0500, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:
> > One question: Why? Familiar is Debian based, right? The driving principle
>
> Familiar uses Debian's resources (given the fact it is IMO one of the most sane
> Linux distributions, and has an extensive ARM port), but that doesn't mean we
> use all their technology. We stay as much in common with them as possible,
> when it works for us in the given environment.
>
> > behind Debian is that you can _always_ upgrade. And Debian's been
>
> Except when Perl breaks.. er, sorry. ;)

Hey, that was in unstable, for only a while, and it never bit me,
personally, so it didn't happen, right ;-) Bigger problem was when bash
broke. Oops.

>
> > through every kind of library and kernel change you can imagine. Hey
> > I was around for the big aout to ELF switch, the libc change over, and
> > others, and I've nver done a reinstall. I've always said "One computer,
> > one Debian install". What technical difficulties make it impossible to
> > do the same on the iPaq?
>
> Who said it was impossible? It's just a pain because we haven't fully
> developed the technology to do it in a robust manner, yet. Debian has a real
> bonus in that most of the machines they work with have: a) swap, and b) real
> storage space. Not to mention the fact that their packaging tools have
> years under their belt, where ours are pretty new.
>
> This is a big issue, it's just not getting tackled in v0.5. If it's a high
> enough priority, lets start working on it.

I agree, that there's few enough of us using 0.4 (and we're all by
definition either developers or crazy early adopters) that a reflash is
not a big deal at this time, but I did want to make the point that the
ideal of Debian 'always upgrade' is a good one, and familiar should try to
live up to it when and if it can. Space is going to be the big problem.
I forsee a need for very careful sequencing of package upgrades, rather
than the batch oriented upgrades that debian favors. For libarary changes,
there might even need to be intermediate packages that you upgrade to
in steps. Ouch.

BTW, the policy is that you can always upgrade from one _release_ to
the next, not necessarily from some intermediate point.

Ross
Received on Fri Aug 24 2001 - 14:36:36 EDT