Package: tech-ctte
Severity: serious
Dear members of the Technical Committee,
I hereby submit to your attention the "dpkg multi-arch conflict".
I believe the issue is well-known, so I describe it only briefly below;
feel free to ask if you need more information.
A multi-arch [1] enabled version of dpkg has been available for quite a
while. Its inclusion in the archive has been one of the early Wheezy
release goals. Since many months now, the upload of such a version of
dpkg has been held back due to repeated NACK-s by one of the dpkg
co-maintainers (Guillem Jover, Cc-ed), based on his desire to do a full
code review of the multi-arch implementation, which has written by the
other dpkg co-maintainer (Raphael Hertzog, Cc-ed as well).
[1] http://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/MultiArch
The desire to do a full code review is good, but Guillem doesn't seem to
be able to complete the review in a reasonable time frame. Since many
months now, the delay of the upload is a cause of worry for the release
team [2] and other project members. The situation has escalated to the
point that another developer (Cyril Brulebois) has done a dpkg NMU a
couple of days ago [3]; the NMU has been promptly reverted by Guillem
[4].
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2011/10/msg00050.html
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2012/01/msg00049.html
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2012/02/msg00000.html
As DPL, I'm worried about two aspects of this issue:
a) The risk of legitimating the fact that by not acting a developer can
block indefinitely the work of other developers (and possibly of the
entire project when working on a rather far reaching release goal);
I've elaborated more on this subject 3 months ago in [5].
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2011/10/msg00060.html
b) The risk of a negative impact on project morale if---due to the
reason above rather than a legitimate technical reason---we will miss
the Wheezy multi-arch release goal.
I therefore bring before you the issue of whether:
- one of the dpkg co-maintainers has the right to block indefinitely a
dpkg upload, in wait of full code review of the multi-arch code;
- or rather if the other co-maintainer has the right to override his
NACKs and go ahead with uploads that would allow project-wide testing
of the dpkg multi-arch implementation.
Many thanks in advance for your help,
Cheers.
PS I've to point out that timing on this issue is, unfortunately,
critical. The Wheezy freeze is close and according to the release
team we're already late wrt the ideal upload date for dpkg. The delay
is not tech-ctte's fault, of course, but please understand that a
long decision time on your part would be a de facto decision. I'd
appreciate if you could reach a decision on this in a timely manner.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences ...... http://upsilon.cc/zack ...... . . o
Debian Project Leader ....... @zack on identi.ca ....... o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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