Re: More 5 november in the release schedule [and 1 more messages]
On 10/11/16 08:26, Christoph Biedl wrote:
> Ian Jackson wrote...
>
>> I think what is really worrying people is the fear that they might
>> miss something, for good reasons, and then find that their work that
>> they care about is thrown out of stretch.
>>
>> It is difficult to address this fear with logical arguments intended
>> to demonstrate that "it won't happen to a responsible maintainer",
>> because it is so easy to think of scenarios where, at the very least,
>> it's hard to be sure that the right things would happen.
>
> For me it's a bit different. If John S.(lacker) Maintainer ignored the
> messages about debhelper compat 4 removal for ten and about the
> openssl 1.1 transition for seven months, and in January suddenly finds
> his packages got kicked out and cannot return for stretch - he had it
> coming.
>
> If however Jane R.(esponsible) Maintainer did everything right but did
> not realize somebody else's non-action affects her packages as well,
> through a build dependency or whatever ... until the "Your package was
> removed from testing" e-mail arrives: That's quite a nuisance.
>
> So if I, in Jane's position, could be certain I'll learn about a
> pending removal that affects my packages early enough I can avoid this
> (by kicking the maintainer or NMU), my concerns were neglectable. A
> grace period of just a few days was sufficient. This mechanism is
> implemented for install dependencies, but after reading this thread
> I'm not sure it exists for other scenarios as well.
>
>> On the other hand, it would be really easy for the Release Team to
>> address this fear. All they have to say is that if there is a really
>> good excuse (maintainer seriously ill; build-dependency broken and
>> maintainer not notified; or whatever), they will be willing to
>> consider exceptions.
>
> I guess the Release Team plays tough in the first place so people do
> their job *now* instead of asking for exceptions later. I'd call that
> wise tactics. The e-thing still might happen if there's really, really
> good reason. But creating false hope sends the wrong signal.
>
> Finally, there's a thing called "trust": I trust the Release Team does
> this solely in order to keep the freeze time as short as possible,
> everybody hates that time anyway. This trust was created by the very
> people behind it, and the way they acted in the past months.
+1.
And yes, we will give exceptions on a case by case basis, as we have always done.
Also, as has been noted in this thread, it looks like some processes could be
improved (e.g. notifying rdeps when removing a package from unstable). Let's see
what affects the release process and then let's try to improve those things.
Cheers,
Emilio
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