Hi all,

I have a simple question, which aways appear with a new debian-version.

When a new version is official released (let`s say: from bookworm to trixie), what is best way to edit the sources.list?

Better means, "delete/comment all bookworm entries" or "leave entries for bookworm and trixie for a while in parallel"?

In the last decade I did the second thing, but maybe I did it wrong in the
last decades.

Thanks for some short hints.

Best

Hans

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2025-06-19 14:40, Hans wrote:

Hi all,

I have a simple question, which aways appear with a new debian-version.

When a new version is official released (let`s say: from bookworm to trixie), what is best way to edit the sources.list?

Better means, "delete/comment all bookworm entries" or "leave entries for bookworm and trixie for a while in parallel"?

In the last decade I did the second thing, but maybe I did it wrong in the last decades.

Thanks for some short hints.

I can't tell you if it is the "best" way to do things, but I have always
just deleted the entries associated with the previous release when I
upgraded distros. I never have noticed any disadvantages when doing that.

But, maybe you should also consider migrating to *.sources files? The
old sources.list file will become deprecated sometime in the future now
that Debian has migrated to the new system.

Grx HdV

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 19.06.2025 14:50 Uhr Hans wrote:

When a new version is official released (let`s say: from bookworm to
trixie), what is best way to edit the sources.list?

I use search and replace in my text editor (vim) to replace the old
version.

Better means, "delete/comment all bookworm entries" or "leave entries
for bookworm and trixie for a while in parallel"?

Don't do that, as you might install older packages that aren't in the
current release which give you certain dependency errors.



--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1750337401muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Better means, "delete/comment all bookworm entries" or "leave entries
for bookworm and trixie for a while in parallel"?

Don't do that, as you might install older packages that aren't in the
current release which give you certain dependency errors.

Which of one I should not do?

I fear, that when deleting any entries of the previous release, it might want to deinstall packages ("applications" in this sense) from bookworm I want to keep. My thoughts are, if these will be kept, then on one hand it might block install of packages from trixie, but on the other hand it wil not break the system.

But, on the third hand, this thinking might be complete false.

Hans

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 19.06.2025 17:00 Uhr Hans wrote:

I fear, that when deleting any entries of the previous release, it
might want to deinstall packages ("applications" in this sense) from
bookworm I want to keep. My thoughts are, if these will be kept, then
on one hand it might block install of packages from trixie, but on
the other hand it wil not break the system.

It won't. It will remove them if dependency problems occur and asks you
in that case - the sources.list is irrelevant in this case.

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to 1750345202muell@stinkedores.dorfdsl.de

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, Jun 19, 2025 at 16:57:11 +0200, Hans wrote:

Which of one I should not do?

The advice is only to include sources for the current stable release,
and not for any older releases.

I fear, that when deleting any entries of the previous release, it might want to deinstall packages ("applications" in this sense) from bookworm I want to keep.

If the packaging system wants to remove a package that came from
oldstable for dependency reasons, having oldstable sources listed
won't change that.

Some old packages (usually versioned libraries) are kept around forever
and don't cause any problems. They just sit on your hard drive doing
nothing, because nothing uses them or depends on them.

The only time it's advantageous to keep oldstable sources is if you
need to *add* something from oldstable, typically a library, in order to
run some compiled binary program that you got from outside of Debian.
In these cases, you're on your own -- there's no support for it. Also,
going back just one release may not be sufficient. You'll often end
up trawling through the archive of past packages to find a compatible
library, after you estimate what year the program was compiled.

Personally, I'd recommend replacing the oldstable sources with the stable sources (but don't use the word "stable" or "oldstable"; use the release
name; I'm just using generalized language here). If it turns out later
that you need to add a package from bookworm on your trixie system, *then*
you can add bookworm sources (or download the singleton package directly
from the archive). Otherwise, there's no need to continue downloading
lists of packages from multiple releases. It's just a waste of your
disk space and bandwidth.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2025-06-20 22:15, 🦓 wrote:

Gisteren schreef lists@nodatagrabbing.com:

I can't tell you if it is the "best" way to do things, but I have always
just deleted the entries associated with the previous release when I
upgraded distros. I never have noticed any disadvantages when doing that.

if that is so safe, then i would just suggest a stable file:/etc/apt/sources.list.d/stable.list simply specifying
deb http://deb.debian.org/ stable main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/ stable main

That is almost equivalent to what I did a few months ago. But I did it
using the new system with DEB822-formatted files and for testing.

Grx HdV

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 22:15:21 +0200, 🦓 wrote:

Gisteren schreef lists@nodatagrabbing.com:

I can't tell you if it is the "best" way to do things, but I have always just deleted the entries associated with the previous release when I upgraded distros. I never have noticed any disadvantages when doing that.

if that is so safe, then i would just suggest a stable file:/etc/apt/sources.list.d/stable.list simply specifying
deb http://deb.debian.org/ stable main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/ stable main

There are some issues with this.

* Don't use the word "stable" in sources.list, because it points to a
moving target. When a new stable occurs, "stable" will point to the
next release, and that is a VERY BAD IDEA. You don't want a surprise
partial upgrade to occur. Release upgrades require planning.

* You're missing the non-free-firmware section which most users will
need for hardware support.

* You're missing the security update source, which almost everyone will
want, unless their system is un-networked during normal operation,
and even then, they might still want security updates periodically.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

On Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 10:15:21PM +0200, 🦓 wrote:

if that is so safe, then i would just suggest a stable file:/etc/apt/sources.list.d/stable.list simply specifying
deb http://deb.debian.org/ stable main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/ stable main

Congratulations, you just told people to disable all security updates.

This entire thread could have been answered by "do what the release
notes tell you to do." There is literally a section in there telling you
what sources.list should look like, and everyone is supposed to read
the release notes before upgrading.

Anyone asking about this needs to read the release notes.

Anyone providing answers in this thread that differ from what the
release notes say needs to read the release notes.

Everyone needs to read the release notes before upgrading, every time.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2025-06-20 22:45, Greg Wooledge wrote:

As that was a suggestion following my remark I'll add some points to
what I already posted, because I think testing is a bit different to
stable in this respect. Just to make sure others are aware of that.

There are some issues with this.

* Don't use the word "stable" in sources.list, because it points to a
moving target. When a new stable occurs, "stable" will point to the
next release, and that is a VERY BAD IDEA. You don't want a surprise
partial upgrade to occur. Release upgrades require planning.

Agreed, but I don't think that argument is valid for testing. Which is
what I am using. Testing is more of a rolling release. Stable is not.
And yes, I know testing can bring its own issues with it. I am fully
prepared to resolve them when they occur. But over the last 30 years
those were just minor issues that were easily solved.

* You're missing the non-free-firmware section which most users will
need for hardware support.

Yes, in the example given for stable that is true. I my case I included
the whole shebang:

main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

for testing and testing-security

That might not be to everyone's tastes though.

* You're missing the security update source, which almost everyone will
want, unless their system is un-networked during normal operation,
and even then, they might still want security updates periodically.

Agreed.

Grx HdV

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 10:15:21PM +0200, 🦓 wrote:

Gisteren schreef lists@nodatagrabbing.com:

I can't tell you if it is the "best" way to do things, but I have always just deleted the entries associated with the previous release when I upgraded distros. I never have noticed any disadvantages when doing that.

if that is so safe, then i would just suggest a stable file:/etc/apt/sources.list.d/stable.list simply specifying
deb http://deb.debian.org/ stable main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/ stable main

Hi,

That's *precisely* why we suggested to people to use the codename as
part of the sources.list files. Bearing in mind we expect to release
Testing as Trixie/Debian 13 in a couple of months ...

If you pin to a codename of "forky" (once trixie releases), you'll get
unstable and testing relating to forky and to stable, oldstable, oldoldstable as the years go by after release of forky as Debian 14.

If you pin to "stable" as trixie releases, that's fine. Once forky releases
you have a sudden unexpected flag day as *everything* changes underneath you.

Anyone currently running *stable* in their sources.list files for bookworm
is going to have this problem when trixie releases in a couple of months.
It is always an argument whether Debian actually has one stable release or multiple releases running concurrently - is "Debian" current stable or the whole thing?

All best, as ever,

Andy Cater
(amacater@debian.org)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)