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Re: On Bugs, take 2



On Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 12:30:15PM -0500, Neal H Walfield wrote:
> This does not, IMHO, fix the problem.  Those people who are naively
> reporting bugs (and who this change is intended for) are not likely to
> read this message or any documentation on this: ``brownbag, what's that?
> Hmm, must be important.''  Thus, important should be left in its current
> ``popular'' meaning, i.e. what you are calling brownbag, and a new name
> should be given to important bugs, e.g. violation.

I'm leery of leaving a severity around that's poorly defined, and
largely meaningless. The scale from critical down to wishlist, except for
"important" in the "popular" sense, is fairly clear:

	* makes unrelated stuff break, introduces security holes just by
	  existing (critical)
	* makes the package unusable (grave)
	* makes the package undistributable (important/violation)
	* makes the package buggy (normal)
	* gives a way in which the package could be improved (wishlist)

The other problem, is that "violation" isn't really a "severity". Although
I guess "wishlist" isn't either.

Okay, so how about:

	* a new severity "violation", defined as "a severe violation of
	  Debian policy (that is, violation of a must directive)"

	* redefining the "important" severity to something like: "an
	  `important' bug, that should be fixed before the next release.
	  The package maintainer has final word on whether a bug is
	  important or not. Packages will not be removed prior to release
	  simply for having one of these bugs."

	* eventually changing "important" (as well as "fixed") to be a
	  bug tag, rather than a severity.

Cheers,
aj, who'd like some consensus on this well before the next freeze

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

  ``We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.
                 We believe in: rough consensus and working code.''
                                      -- Dave Clark

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