Re: Lots of problems with upstream, please help!
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 12:38 PM, David Smith wrote:
> With Wheezy coming out, I'm trying to help any way I can but I'm
> having some problems.
It is probably too late to fix anything for wheezy unless it meets the
release team's freeze criteria:
http://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html
> Technically they are all problems with upstream and they're all for
> different software. I really don't know how to deal with them to help
> Debian.
In future you might want include more specific information, like links
to bugs you have filed etc.
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
> 1. As a big regression from Squeeze, I had to blacklist an HP
> platform driver from loading into the kernel in order for my wireless
> to work well. I filed a debian bug report about it and the debian
> maintainers helped me collect all the information I needed and submit
> it to upstream. I did all that, it's been 3 weeks, and the upstream
> kernel platform devs seem to have completely ignored it, although
> linux-wireless confirmed the platform driver is doing something very
> strange. So I don't know what to do. Maybe I just need to wait
> longer?
Your options are:
Wait until someone with the appropriate skills is motivated to do something.
Find a way to motivate someone with the appropriate skills to do something.
Switch to some different hardware that doesn't have the issue.
Learn the appropriate skills to fix this issue yourself and send the
patch to the Linux maintainers.
> 2. About 8 months ago, an upstream developer wrote a patch to enable a
> feature in upstream software. Upstream didn't review the patch so it
> never officially made it into upstream software. Requests to review
> the patch by me and others are getting completely ignored upstream.
> The upstream dev that made the patch looks to have disappeared.
> Upstream seems reluctant to accept, reluctant to reject and reluctant
> to review, so it stays in limbo. Without upstream's proper review /
> approval of the patch, in addition to the fact that the patch
> essentially enables a feature, it's probably unlikely to ever make it
> into Wheezy, right? I filed a bug report saying that the feature
> didn't work as the feature is listed in the software as being
> available, but it's not actually enabled in the code. I'd imagine an
> NMU for enabling this feature in Wheezy would be inappropriate and the
> proper Debian thing to do would be to just write a different patch to
> remove the feature so the user doesn't see it in the software?
> Although, that's pretty much the exact opposite of what I'm doing on
> my PC so I really don't have much motivation to do that.
Your description of this issue isn't very clear but it sounds like
something that doesn't fit the freeze criteria:
http://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html
Sounds like someone needs to take over development of this project
(zero idea if that is possible since you didn't mention any
specifics).
> 3. A couple months ago, an upstream developer wrote a patch to fix
> what I consider to be a serious bug that makes a lot of apps unusable
> under normal (aka "user customized") conditions. Upstream reviewed and
> approved the patch but the patch is written for KDE 4.9. 1. I tried
> applying the patch to KDE 4.8. 4 in Wheezy which ended up as a
> spectacular failure during compile. I asked upstream to back port the
> patch to kde 4.8. 4 in Debian and they said that they do not control
> the release of Debian and that KDE 4.8.5 is available. I'm almost
> certain the patch upstream wrote isn't going to work with 4.8.5
> either, but I haven't tried it as I don't want to be that far away
> from Debian's packages. There is a work-around that's very easy to
> do, but it's not obvious, and it saps performance from my PC. I'm
> certain some Debian users running KDE will eventually run into this
> very annoying problem and have to Google and enable the work around.
> I will likely end up backporting the patch myself for my own personal
> needs if the workaround annoys me enough some day, which it probably
> will.... eventually... I worry that if I backport this patch, it
> might be a little ugly and probably not suitable for Debian anyway,
> although I really haven't looked at backporting the patch yet.
If it meets the freeze criteria (zero idea there since you didn't
mention specifics) and you are willing to backport the patch, I guess
the Debian KDE team would be happy to upload it, especially if you are
interested in joining the team.
> 4. There appears to be a regression in some streaming libraries. When
> I'm running wheezy and I replace some audio streaming libraries in
> Wheezy with the ones from Squeeze, it fixes the same problem in
> several different audio players in Wheezy. What's very strange is that
> some other audio players don't have the problem at all in Wheezy with
> both the older and newer libs. I want to say that it's all the audio
> streaming libraries fault, but at the same time it appears that the
> recommended way for audio players to interface with these audio
> streaming libraries may have changed. It's so very complicated and
> I'm having a lot of trouble debugging since it's not crashing ( I
> wish!) and only periodically throwing out a warning or two in the
> background. I haven't yet contacted the audio streaming libraries
> because I'm trying to understand how the recommended way to interface
> with the streaming libraries has changed and it's very complicated.
> I guess I should be contacting the audio streaming devs for
> help/advice? Or maybe investigating the audio players to make sure
> they're doing the "recommended" things when they play audio? Or both?
> I wish I could just point and say "it's broken" as I usually do when
> I have problems, but it's only "partially broken" under very specific
> circumstances for only certain audio players which makes this a *VERY*
> annoying problem that's driving me crazy as it's hard to file a simple
> bug report for this problem.
Probably pulseaudio being stupid again, I tend to just run `killall
pulseaudio` and move on with my day.
> Really, I'm having a lot of problems with upstream and I'd like some
> help/suggestions on the "right" thing to do to help Debian. For the
> most part, I have been creating bug reports in both Debian and
> upstream and "forwarding" the debian bug report to upstream so Debian
> maintainers are aware of the problem.. But I'd like to do more.
That is more than most people are doing, so thanks! The next step
would be to learn the skills needed to debug these issues and fix them
yourself.
--
bye,
pabs
http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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