On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 12:02:32AM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > > People really do use both package priorities and sections still for > > selecting packages in the package management tools, and it would be great > > to have them fixed. > Seconded. I tried once to install all "optional" packages at the same > time (which is supposed to work). But it failed miserably. > But couldn't all the override stuff be something that could be worked on > by people without being FTP assistants? Exporting the overrides list to > $RANDOM_VCS and allowing people to submit patches in an easy way could > be enough... Committing override changes is already an ftpassistant task, normally individually, but I think bulk changes are possible too. Personally I'd look very favourably on anyone who wanted to become an ftpassistant who not only went and found the problems with the overrides but also prepared and verified a list of the changes needed (this package needs its priority raised; that one needs its priority lowered; once all these changes are made there aren't any new problems because having raised one package one of its dependencies also needs its priority raised; etc). We have a bunch of override change requests outstanding, mostly because the ftpmaster alias is so absurdly heavily spammed that they get lost in the noise; having more structured checking of priorities/sections that someone actually took the time to monitor would probably make that much better. (The idea being that you'd detect a problem when the override differs from the value in the package, and then either annotate that with a bug number because the package's value is wrong, or fix the override to match the package) ATM no one's paying any real attention to this; which does mean that there's not a lot of help to be had in working out how to make it better. OTOH, it also means it's not that hard to become an expert on the topic (no one else really knows that much about it) or the most effective contributor (no one else is doing much)... :) Cheers, aj
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