Re: Two proposals for a better Lenny (testing related).
On Wed, Jun 13, 2007 at 05:32:01PM +0100, Luis Matos wrote:
> > > > Um, no. That does not happen automatically. In rare cases it happens
> > > > because the release team has overridden the installability check for a
> > > > package, because maintainers have not coordinated their transitions in
> > > > unstable and as a result something needs to be broken to ever get any of the
> > > > packages updated because you can't get 300 maintainers to get their packages
> > > > in a releasable state *and* leave them alone long enough to transition to
> > > > testing as a group.
> > > So please, don't do those "oh, let them pass" transitions ... they BREAK
> > > stuff ... for real.
> > What?
> Some packages are allowed to pass into testing even if other depends on
> it, but has issues that will take some time to resolve. This will make
> that that package, that is now in testing, will not be installable in
> anyway. This happens sometimes.
Well, tough. Take it up with the maintainers who don't coordinate their
uploads to unstable with the maintainers of related packages. The release
team only breaks packages in testing when we *have* to do so to move the
release forward (meaning, a net reduction in RC problems).
> > > > That's a problem of the packaging of those kernel modules, then, not a
> > > > problem of testing per se; even if you track stable and therefore the
> > > > problem only affects you once every two years, it's still a problem that
> > > > should be addressed -- e.g., with metapackages like nvidia-kernel-2.6-686
> > > > (oh look, this one already exists).
> > > kernel upgrades from 2.6.50 to 2.6.51 ... nvidia packages don't build in
> > > time (they are not free, right?) ... kernel passes to testing ...
> > That doesn't happen.
> well ... it happened to me before etch was released ... in such a way
> that i gave up using them.
No. The nvidia kernel packages are a particular case where the module
packages were willfully broken in testing by the release team because of
long-outstanding RC bugs in related nvidia packages.
Again, this was a necessary trade-off which reduced the overall number of
release-critical problems in testing.
> > > this is a simple upgrade ... because kernel packages are always NEW, the
> > > kernel will pass because it has no reverse dependency problems in
> > > testing.
> > False.
> true.
> nvidia-kernel (meta packge) depends on linux-image-2.6.10.
> a new linux-image-2.6.20 passes to testing. The new nvidia-kernel did
> not pass because it is too young.
You either don't know how testing works, or you don't know how the Debian
kernel packages are structured.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
Reply to: