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Re: Release-critical bugs, and #97671



>>"Ian" == Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk> writes:

 Ian> In this case then there are several pieces of different information
 Ian> which we might record in the BTS severity field:

 Ian>  (a) The package maintainer's idea of how urgent/important the
 Ian>      bug is
 Ian>  (c) Something specified by the policy manual

	if severity criteria are objective, the differences could be
 minimized here. I fail to see why we should not strive to have these
 two be as close to identical as possible. We may not achieve perfect
 matches in all cases, but objective criteria should take the guess
 work out of assigning bug severities.

 Ian>  (b) The release manager's idea of whether the bug is releaseable

	Since the bug submitter is not generally the RM, and the RM
 decides on a case by case basis, and factors in the time  left to
 release, this is the hardest criteria to achieve, and indeed, we
 should not even try.

	The BTS records severities, determined in a deterministic,
 objective fashion. There is a general understanding that the more
 severe ``severity'' categories are more lilely to be classified as
 un-releasable by the RM, by this is a loose guideline at best.

	We MUST decouple RC-ness from the BTS severities, since the
 former depends on case by case subjective judgment of a since person,
 and is not time independent.

 >> Absolutely unconditionally _no_. This leaves the definition of serious
 >> a matter of judgement on behalf of the submitter which makes managing
 >> the release an order of magnitude more difficult.

 Ian> Well, the current wording sort of does that too:

 Ian>       serious
 Ian> 	  is a severe violation of Debian policy (that is, it violates a
 Ian> 	  "must" or "required" directive), or,

	This part is clearly objective.

 Ian> 	  in the package maintainer's opinion, makes the package
 Ian> 	  unsuitable for release.

	I am fairly agnostic about this part, but it seems somehow
 fitting That a package maitnainer, their discretion, may indicate a
 general unsuitability of the package for release (a hint to the
 RM). Branden has also lobbied for the Justification: header in the
 bug report, which can be used to distinguish beteeen the two flavours
 of a serious bug.

 Ian> But, I can see that you might want to avoid too much discretion being
 Ian> exercised by bug submitters.

	Discretion is not quote how I would describe bug severity
 escalation, but yes, bug severities ought to be as objective as we
 can make them.

	manoj
-- 
 We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first
 attack. Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
Manoj Srivastava   <srivasta@debian.org>  <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05  CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B  924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C


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