[plug] apache readiness

[James Devenish]

In message <5.1.0.14.2.20031210151202.03ef2ec0 at cyllene.uwa.edu.au>
on Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 03:35:44PM +0800, Denis Brown wrote:
> The apt-get system should sort out any dependencies for you.   In my early 
> forays into Linux-land I installed Apache, Postgresql, php and so on from 
> .debs but became a bit disenchanted at the comparative sloth of the "Debian 
> Machine" (tm) at keeping up with the later Apache, PostgreSQL, etc 
> developments.

Just as a general point of interest: it is intentional that the Debian
'stable' distibution is 'out of date' by default, and Debian do actually
'backport' security fixes. So you (we) don't need to be particularly
concerned about "missing out" on the latest security updates.

> It always seemed that they were a long way behind the 
> current releases.

BTW there are the 'testing' and 'unstable' releases which often have
decent versions (but not if the dependencies of a package are
particulary hairy or if a specific package is not being maintained). You
can also install Debian-patched source (add deb-src lines to your APT
sources.list, as described on this list a few days ago). The PostgreSQL
example might be good, though, because Debian might not have that, yet.
One thing to note, though, is that the maintainer might already be
working on 7.4 for Debian.

> The other thing is data migration.   For example when upgrading PostgreSQL 
> across versions you need to pg_dump or pg_dumpall to save your data in a 
> "portable" format and then restore from the dumps when the new version is 
> present.   Not sure if the apt-get process handles that.   Anyone know?

Just as a general point of interest: it is typical that Debian packages
would attempt to take care of data migration automatically, or at least
point out what you need to do.