["DebianReleases"] > DebianTesting
Debian testing is the current development cycle of Debian. It's named after the next stable release [:DebianLenny:lenny] (as of May 2007)
inline:Portal/IDB/official-doc.png |
[http://www.debian.org/devel/testing] - Official page about Debian Testing. |
What is in Testing
A package is installed into the testing dist from [:DebianUnstable:Unstable] automatically when a list of requirements is fulfilled:
- The package is at least 10 days old.
- The package has been built for all the architectures which the present version in testing was built for.
- Installing the package into testing will not make the distribution more uninstallable.
- The package does not introduce new release critical bugs.
These requirements should assure that testing is in a pretty workable state but still developing. Especially when packages get restructured, packages that are not quite releasable get into testing, so not all the fun of using a developmental version is removed.
Considerations
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If you use testing currently (pre-lenny), you should change your /etc/apt/sources.list to track lenny, for security reasons. read [http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/06/msg00006.html announcement] |
An example of testing's unstableness is the upgrade from perl-5.6.0 to perl-5.6.1 which made perl unable to find its modules if they were from a package built with perl-5.6.0. Setting the environment variable PERL5LIB to /usr/lib/perl/5.6.0 solved the problem.
Testing changes more often than [:DebianStable:stable] , but not as crazily as [:DebianUnstable:unstable]. See also DebianStability.
Testing has the worst security update speed compared to stable and unstable. Don't prefer testing if security is a concern. (is this still valid after 2005-06-06?)
If you were tracking [:DebianTesting:testing] but really meant to be tracking [:DebianEtch:etch], update your /etc/apt/sources.list replacing 'testing' with 'etch'. The 'etch' alias would have tracked 'etch' through it's transition into 'stable'.
You can see what distribution an alias is tracking by looking at the Release file; e.g.:
If you wonder why a package (or a particular version thereof) is not yet in testing, see http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian.
Testing to Stable
- How does ''Testing'' becomes the new ''Stable'' release ?
- see ["DebianReleaseFAQ"].
See also
[:DebianLenny:Debian Lenny] - Lenny is the current testing distribution.
- Testing
[http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch10.en.html#s-security-support-testing Security support for the testing branch] (from the "Securing Debian Manual")
- ["Status/Testing"] - Current status of Testing.
["DebianReleases"] - more about the different Debian releases.
[:DebianStable:Debian Stable] - The official Debian release (the one with the fewer bugs, and security issues).
[:DebianUnstable:Debian Unstable] - repository where new & untested packages are introduced.
CategoryProposedDeletion : why is this page proposed to deletion?