Subject: Okay, explain it to me slowly.

From: Richard Kaszeta <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 10:02:07 -0500

I'm trying to get Debian 1.1 installed (my machines are happily
running, but I want to get a rather new system up so I stand a chance
of actually making some packages one of these days).

Questions:

1. On the main site (ftp.debian.org, which I think is i-connect.com) and
most of the mirrors we have

buzz/
buzz-updates/
rex/
stable/
unstable/
Debian-1.1/

(Yes, some of these are links to each other, I know)

Could someone give me the rundown on what's what?  What's the
difference between rex and unstable?

(Any 'Elmers' still out there?  I'm having tremendous difficulties
getting 1.1 up and running, unlike all the previous Debian versions
I've used)

-- 
Richard W Kaszeta 			Graduate Student/Sysadmin
[email-masked]			University of MN, ME Dept
http://www.me.umn.edu/0h/home/kaszeta/www.html
--
Insert witty comment here.

---

From: Lars Wirzenius <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 1996 15:16:06 +0300

[ NB: I read the list.  Don't CC replies to me.  I pay for my PPP.  Thanks ]

> Debian-1.1/

Each release with a version number has a code name.  Release 1.1 is called
buzz.  Debian-1.1 is a symlink to buzz so that people don't have to know
the code name.

When a release is made, the contents of the directory are frozen.  No 
packages will change in that directory anymore.  All changes will be done
elsewhere.

Release 1.1 has some problems.  To fix them, you should install packages
from buzz-updates.  We put only bug fixes there, no other new packages.
If you install everything from buzz and buzz-updates, you should have as
good a stable system as possible.  Since buzz is stable, the stable
symbolic link points at buzz.

To make it easier to download 1.1+updates, there is or will be a directory
buzz-fixed (not sure about the name), which will contain 1.1 + all fixed
packages.  (buzz-updates contains only the fixed packages.)  stable might
point at buzz-fxed instead (I can't check this at the moment).

Packages are not duplicated between the three directories.  Instead, it
is done via symbolic links.  This saves a lot of disk space.

The next release (probably 1.2) will be called rex.  All new packages
go in here (with important bug fixes also going into buzz-updates).
This is currently under heavy development, and it is therefore somewhat
unstable.  Hence the symlink unstable pointing at rex.

The point with code names is that we can avoid having a directory called
debian-1.2.  Having such a directory will make people think it is the
newest stable version (this already happended with a directory named
debian-1.0).  Since every version has a code name, everyone will be so
confused that need to look at the directory much closer than normal, and
then they won't mistake rex for a stable version.  (This might be called
the "confuse'em right" principle.)

When we are ready to make release 1.2, we essentially do the following
(not necessarily all at once):

	create a new development directory (assume minttu); this
		is initially a symlink copy of rex
	make stable point at rex
	make unstable point at minttu
	create symlink Debian-1.2, point it at rex
	create rex-updates, rex-fixed
	remove buzz, buzz-updates, buzz-fixes, Debian-1.1
	
None of those steps move the actual package files very much.  This means
that ftp mirrors will need to transfer very little data because of the
releas.  We made the mistake earlier of renaming the directories, and
this caused a lot of unnecessary network traffic.

> difference between rex and unstable?

None, at the moment.

(I can't check it, but perhaps someone could make a short summary of this
into the toplevel README, if there isn't something there already?)