Re: Activating t-p-u by default (was: Re: For those who care about their packages in Debian)

[Philipp Kern <trash@philkern.de>]

On 2010-08-28, David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies+debian@gmail.com> wrote:
> As far as i understand t-p-u i don't understand why the default should
> be < 500. If i am adding it (or let a piece of software add it for me)
> i guess i want these packages on my system: proposed-updates at least
> suggests for me, that they will be soon in testing anyway, just,
> that they are tested now before they enter "real" testing in an overlay
> archive. If i don't want to participate in this testing,
> i should remove the archive from my sources.

Please note that t-p-u isn't moderated like the other proposed-updates suites
(i.e. there is no p-u-NEW).  That means that every DD has unrestricted upload
access there which might or might not involve asking the Release Team
beforehand.  The migration from t-p-u from testing is reviewed by the Release
Team, though, and will only happen if all builds are present[1] and if
the result has a lower or equal uninstallability count.

So it's a tad more likely that an upload to t-p-u never enters testing
(just like uploads to unstable might not end up in testing), while in
the (old)stable-proposed-updates it rarely happens.[2]

I think that's why it was merely a "helper" suite to upload to when the way
through unstable is blocked by (more or less useful) library transitions
(or shlibs bumps).  That's also where our "please keep unstable free from
not-releaseable new upstream versions" points are coming from.

Kind regards,
Philipp Kern

[1] Because of how the autobuilding system works for testing, there would be no
    other way to get builds for it anymore after an approval hint.
[2] It is possible that an upload is skipped at point release time because
    we do not consider it ready.  But when we accepted it into p-u, we're
    committed to at least push a revert afterwards if the update is
    unreleasable.