Re: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting
Scripsit Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>
> For these reasons, I think the snapshotting approach is a better option,
> because it puts the package selection choices directly in the hands of
> the porters rather than trying to munge the existing testing scripts
> into something that will make reasonable package selections for you.
What is "the snapshotting approach"? I understood the announcement
such that the lesser architectures are only ever allowed to have a
single version of each .deb distributed by the project, namely the
lastest one built at any given time.
I think that would be vastly to the non-benefit of such an
architecture's users, and I don't see how other architectures
can be harmed by allowing the lesser architectures to distribute
whatever .debs they manage to build corresponding to the official
testing and stable distributions.
Especially, if I somehow dug a Foomatic 664 with punched-tape main
memory out of a dumpster and wanted to run Debian on it (assuming
somebody had ported it), then for my own sanity I would like to have
to option of running the same software versions as I'm running on the
stable x86 box. If lesser architectures are _required_ to run the
bleeding edge, then Debian are significanly degrading the user
experience, and with no real gain that I can see.
> First, if they're not being kept in sync, it increases the number of
> matching source packages that we need to keep around (which, as has
> been discussed, is already a problem);
There could be a rule specifying that only versions that _are_ being
kept in sync can be in the archive, with some reasonable time limit to
let the arch build the newest version when it migrates to testing.
> second, if you want to update using the testing scripts, you either have
> to run a separate copy of britney for each arch (time consuming,
> resource-intensive)
But if the arch's porters are willing to do that, why shouldn't they
be allowed to?
> third, if failures on non-release archs are not release-critical
> bugs (which they're not), you don't have any sane measure of
> bugginess for britney to use in deciding which packages to keep out.
A lesser architecture's concept of testing could just be, "we're
trying our best to keep up with the package versions in the official
testing, regardless of bug counts".
--
Henning Makholm "Jeg mener, at der eksisterer et hemmeligt
selskab med forgreninger i hele verden, som
arbejder i det skjulte for at udsprede det rygte at
der eksisterer en verdensomspændende sammensværgelse."
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