> No one tests anything against Debian any more and assumes
this is absolutely not true. All packages that are available in Debian have a release process, and there is a test bed. there is also the dh_auto_test part of debhelper which becomes increasingly relevant for accepting packages into the debian release process. So if anything the opposite of your claim is true.
Yes I’m talking about third party packages, software and repositories. The contents of the default Debian repositories are excellent, but usually quite old.
most of the useful stuff? can you point me to some data that shows which "useful stuff" is lacking in sid?
what is the actual issue? inability to compile things from source or not knowing that you can install to /usr/local/bin or $HOME/bin etc?
of course everything is either on gihub or gitlab in 2020. the argument that the majority of software that is useful isn't actually available as deb package is false. useful to who? based on what arguments?
To clarify your edit, I am mostly concerned that I want to pull in another deb repo or something so when I do an apt update I get a full set of updates, not the distribution packages and a manual compile job to argue with.
this is absolutely not true. All packages that are available in Debian have a release process, and there is a test bed. there is also the dh_auto_test part of debhelper which becomes increasingly relevant for accepting packages into the debian release process. So if anything the opposite of your claim is true.