Bug tracking system and testing distribution Re: Potato now stable
Anthony Towns writes:
>
> * Working out which bugs are really release-critical and fixing
> their severity so we know where we're at is overly time
> consuming.
We have a problem with the bug tracking system as long as we can't
really find out to which versions of a package a bug really
applies. We only mosttimes have the version of the packages where a
problem showed up. But we don't know if the bug was introduced with
this version or also applies to older ones. And in the case of
different distributions, if the bug was reported eg. for frozen we
don't know if it also exists in newer versions which are allready in
unstable. This is also a problem if a bug which is in one distribution
(like frozen or stable) gets fixed in another (unstable). Another
issue is, that some bugs only appear in special architectures (like
hurd, or powerpc). We really need a way to specify exactly to which
version a version applies.
As long as we don't have this feature we can't really get the
"testing" distribution to work.
> * New "testing" distribution
> This is a (mostly finished) project that will allow us
> to test out distribution by making it "sludgey" rather
> than frozen: that is, a new distribution is added between
> stable and unstable, that is regularly and automatically
> updated with new packages from unstable when they've
> had a little testing and now new RC bugs.
>
> (Anthony Towns; debian-devel)
Some people who met a the Useenix Debian BOF were discussion this
issue. And because I was not aware of your work on "testing" I tried
to build my own solution as a proof of concept. I set up a server at
ftp://lucy.verwaltung.uni-mainz.de/pub/debian-local/ which has a
"stabilized" distribution. This is constructed out of potatos main
part (and can be easily enhanced by contrib etc.).
Only packages which are in potato longer than (the arbitrary value of)
14 days get into "stabalized". The packages must also have correct
dependencies and no important or more severe bugs in the bug tracking
older than 14 days.
The scripts are working quite well, but only than I found out about
the problem with the bug tracking system.
Christoph
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