Re: Trivial bug on apt-file (Was : Re: Development standards for unstable)
On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 04:47:33AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote :
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 06:48:38PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> > > But if you read this bug (#307833), you'd see that the maintainer doesn't
> > > consider it a bug, and has documented why in the README file.
> > It is a bug as the package is not usable without curl or wget installed.
> > Though, I give him a chance to respond to my intention to NMU...
>
> An NMU is not the place to "fix" things that the maintainer has
> specifically said aren't bugs.
Dear Anthony,
As stated by the Debian Policy Manual :
"The Depends field should be used if the depended-on package is required
for the depending package to provide a significant amount of
functionality."
and
"The Recommends field should list packages that would be found together
with this one in all but unusual installations."
Also, the debian BTS developer infos states :
"serious
is a severe violation of Debian policy (roughly, it violates a
"must" or "required" directive), or, in the package maintainer's
opinion, makes the package unsuitable for release."
Apt-file will not be installed on an out-of the box debian by the
command "apt-get install apt-file", because its depends field misses a
dependancy on curl. However, declaring proper dependancies for the
package is a "should", not a "must", so if a debian developper is free
to creating uninstallable packages if he fancies this.
In conclusion, you are right, apt-file sould not be fixed unless the
maintainer accepts it.
As complaining to the tech-ctte should not be done becaues I did not
even try to contact the maintainer directly, I will either:
- Forget about it, or
- File a wishlist bug against packages.debian.org, or whatever
appropriate, to suggest to stop suggesting the use of a broken
package, or at least to mention the bug.
In my opinion, it is a shame that the first workaround for the temporary
unavailability of packages.debian.org is a broken package for which the
fix is trivial and available since more than 200 days. This will comfort
the people who think that debian made by arrogant experts, only for
other experts who are comfortable at the command line, when they will
read the bug report and the answers of the maintainer.
Sébastien, please fix your bug ! Can you imagine Debian if all the
packages, like yours, would need a manual inspection of the error
messages to figure out on what it really depends ???
Best regards,
--
Charles Plessy
Wako, Saitama, Japan
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