Let's freeze Unstable until we are ready to release a Stable version.
Pros:
- Keeps Unstable from being continually destabilized further
- Would force people taking an interest in releasing Stable
- Stable would be more up to date when released
Cons:
- In the past this has resulted in stable releases with key subsystems like GNOME being a year or more out of date at the time of release.
- This worked better when Debian was small.
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On the other hand, maybe this would encourage more appropriate use of experimental ...
I have concerns about the state of unstable, and how long it would take to get it into a releaseable state compared to testing. Look at the release-critical bug lists to see the dramatic difference at the moment (December 2004). -- ColinWatson
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I think there should be a constraint on unstable that every package should be reasonably releasable and be able to reasonably expect that the package will be ready for migration to testing within a certain period of time.
That means tracking the stable upstream releases in unstable unless there is good reason. CVS pulls and development trees belong in experemental. --MikeFedyk
See ReleaseProposals for alternatives.