Re: Uninstallable packages testing/sarge

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 11:31:59AM +1100, Brian May wrote:
> If a package is uninstallable on testing, is it appropriate
> to file a bug report against it, even though it might be OK
> on unstable?
> 
> If a bug report is filled, then people can become aware of the
> problem, preferably before sarge is released..
> 
> On the other hand, it could irritate the maintainer who can't
> do anything about it, perhaps because the problem is fixed
> in unstable.

Packages that are uninstallable purely due to dependencies, as opposed
to broken maintainer scripts, are already tracked here:

  http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/testing_probs.html

  (ditto stable_probs, unstable_probs)

... so there's usually not a great deal of point if the package is fixed
in unstable. As you say, there's often not much the maintainer can do
about it in that case. The people who work on the state of testing
directly are more likely to notice things in testing_probs.html anyway.

> Examples:
> 
> gnome-desktop-data (conflicts against the old version of gnome-core in
> testing).

We do need to get meta-gnome2 into testing anyway.

> kde: depends on broken packages:
> kfind: conflicts with old kdebase-libs in testing
> etc... (total 21 packages marked as broken in aptitude when selecting
> kde)

This is definitely known about; a number of bugs have already been
filed.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]