testin/unstable packages

CyberTron · 2005-03-23 15:40:04

Hi!

First of all, how stable / unstable are the packages in the testing and unstable branch??

second;: how do I enable them??

/CyberTron

arooaroo · 2005-03-23 15:45:27

I'm not entirely sure it's possible to quantilfy "instability" easily. Generally, the packages are beta, which I'm sure you know often contain many bugs. These repos exist to give you the oppurtunity to test latest dev releases, whilst saying "use at your own risk!"

In my /etc/pacman.conf, both repos already exist, but need uncommenting before being used. You'll then need to re-sync: pacman -Sy.

lucke · 2005-03-23 15:54:08

They're as stable as their devs made 'em ;-)

Unstable consists of different 'beta' quality packages, including Openoffice2 beta. But they all have different names than their 'stable' equivalents, usually followed by 'devel' or 'cvs', so you won't accidentally update stable packages.

Testing is another story. It's like a test field for devs and users, usually group of packages are put there to made sure they'd work properly together (like new db package and other packager recompiled with it, just recently) or stuff, that isn't tested thoroughly yet. Most of the stuff went out from testing to current/extra lately.
Enabling it could make you install some packages, which could cause some problems.

To enable both repos, just uncomment proper entries in /etc/pacman.conf.

CyberTron · 2005-03-23 16:13:17

ok, thank you very much for the fast replies

Now I will go and install some nice cutting edge apps

Arch Linux

#1 2005-03-23 15:40:04

testin/unstable packages

#2 2005-03-23 15:45:27

Re: testin/unstable packages

#3 2005-03-23 15:54:08

Re: testin/unstable packages

#4 2005-03-23 16:13:17

Re: testin/unstable packages

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