Re: Questions for the DPL candidates
Matthew Garrett wrote:
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
Andreas Schuldei (DPL candidate)
Angus Lees (DPL candidate)
Branden Robinson (DPL candidate)
Jonathan Walther (DPL candidate)
Little advance public warning was given about this meeting, and the
scope of the discussions that would take place was not made clear
beforehand.
Little advance /private/ warning was given too -- I picked up my ticket
the day before I left, and only had my flight booked a week before that.
Up until about a few weeks before that, the plan was no more specific
than to have a meeting sometime between March and May.
The agenda item for this issue, which was mailed out on the 3rd of
March, was:
---
how to improve the turnaround of bug fixes in testing
[...]
- decoupling ABI changes from RC bugfixes: brainstorm
release criteria for candidate architectures
- setting per-port release requirements (porter expectations) for etch
- how to address per-port problems that remain for sarge
---
As it happened, James and I were staying at Ryan's, and after dinner on
Friday night (before the meeting proper started, but after we'd met
everyone), we chatted about the topic and came to the opinion that
removing a bunch of architectures from being release candidates would be
necessary -- for reasons I hope are adequately explained in the
announcement, or that will be on -devel as people ask. As it turned out,
when we got to the actual meeting the next day, this was more or less
exactly what Steve was wanting to propose, and he seemed to be expecting
most of the objections to come from James, Ryan and/or me. So instead of
that, we then spent a fair while discussing criteria for what support
architectures would/should receive.
Hopefully the above provides some useful specifics for people to talk about.
As a result, the rest of the project had little input into
the decision-making process.
That's why it's posted on the lists now -- it never too late to get
input into something in Debian; even after we've committed to something,
we can almost always change our minds.
Do the other candidates believe that this
was the best that could be done in the circumstances, and if not how
would they avoid similiar situations (and the ensuing fallout) arising
in future?
Really, I think this is a necessary consequence of having small meetings
of the relevant people; the alternatives are to invite everyone -- which
is more or less the same as just having the discussion on the lists,
which has its own problems that I hope have adequately been covered
elsewhere; or to have meetings that don't generate any conclusions --
which strike me as a waste of time.
I don't think that's actually such a problem; in this case there really
just aren't so many alternatives, and as frustrating as that is for the
people who lose out, until there are some workable alternatives, well,
que sera sera. And given the plan is to give porters fairly complete
control over their architecture in unstable, rather than necessarily
expecting it to be synced with i386; and to provide a snapshot facility
for doing releases, I think this is actually /better/ than the current
situation for non-release-track architectures. Certainly I think it'll
be better for the Hurd than what we currently do, provided they can get
their act back into gear and meet the qualifications for being in Debian
at all.
Personally, I'd much rather worry about the technical side of things and
let the "But you didn't follow procedure / respect my feelings" side of
thing slide; personally, I think the best way of feeling good when
working on a technical project is to get the technology right.
That said, I'm not completely satisfied with the way the meeting was
handled (I guess that's already obvious :); and I did encourage Steve to
try to present it as a proposal for comment instead of a done deal, and
to forward the mail around to you and others running for DPL -- on the
basis that you're/we're hopefully the best people to provide suggestions
on how to move forward on this before it goes onto the lists and there's
any "fallout", and, well, that it absolutely sucks to be blindsided by
things like this.
OTOH, doing RM work is pretty difficult at the best of times, and only
becomes more so when it becomes necessary to start proposing major and
controversial changes like this, and without the forthright support of
the DPL, rapidly approaches impossible. IMO, anyway.
That said, I don't think any of the implementation has been started yet,
and it certainly won't be completed 'til sarge is released; so there's
plenty of time for further comments or tweaks or even reinventions.
Cheers,
aj
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