5.14.3. Direct updates to testing

The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules explained above. However, in some cases, it is necessary to upload packages built only for testing. For that, you may want to upload to testing-proposed-updates.

Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed; they have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you’d better have a good reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is in the release managers’ eyes, you should read the instructions that they regularly give on debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org.

You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can update your packages through unstable. If you can’t (for example because you have a newer development version in unstable), you may use this facility. Even if a package is frozen, updates through unstable are possible, if the upload via unstable does not pull in any new dependencies.

Version numbers are usually selected by appending +debXuY, where X is the major release number of Debian and Y is a counter starting at 1. e.g. 1:2.4.3-4+deb10u1.

Please make sure you didn’t miss any of these items in your upload:

• Make sure that your package really needs to go through testing-proposed-updates, and can’t go through unstable;

• Make sure that you included only the minimal amount of changes;

• Make sure that you included an appropriate explanation in the changelog;

• Make sure that you’ve written the testing Release code names (e.g. bullseye) into your target distribution;

• Make sure that you’ve built and tested your package in testing, not in unstable;

• Make sure that your version number is higher than the version in testing and testing-proposed-updates, and lower than in unstable;

• Ask for authorization for uploading from the release managers.

• After uploading and successful build on all platforms, contact the release team at debian-release@lists.debian.org and ask them to approve your upload.