testing is broken

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Right now testing (woody) is broken.  

The breakage has been going on for some time.  Initially it was an
update to console-data, which fails to configure correctly.  The
package maintainer reports that the actual problem is that woody lacks
a recent enough debconf to deal with the console-data package that's
been added to woody.

And now there's a new apt in woody.  This new apt conflicts with a
jillion packages, including xserver-xfree86, many libraries, emacs20,
cvs and many other important packages.  A friend informs me this also
is probably due to out-of-date debconf.

I have three related complaints:

1) This should be fixed in woody.  The whole point of the testing
   distro is to give a distro that enables people to test packages for
   the upcoming release without getting the latest install-bug-of-the-
   week.  But that requires some kind of prompt attention to the
   install bugs that leak through.

2) There needs to be a bug reporting address for problems like this,
   and other package-pool related inconsistencies.

3) Problems like the one with apt can be automatically detected.
   Packages outside of Extra are not supposed to conflict with other
   packages outside Extra.  It would be very easy to write a scanner
   to go over the archive and report on such inconsistencies.

Thomas