Re: Can we upload binaries using libc6 to hamm yet?

[Mark Shuttleworth <marks@thawte.com>]

Hi folks

The biggest mistake Debian could make would be to try and be all things to
all people.  The decision has been taken that hamm will be libc6 based,
and all effort should be focused on making that happen.  Rather than try
and support both libc5 and libc6,  the energies of so many developers
would best be spent on the update.

Here's a proposal:

  1.  Some developers volunteer to build bo-fixes as they're required.
      They keep their development systems on stable. Typically these would
      be relatively new recruits such as myself,  on a pool basis,  who
      are just going to build packages from source that the maintainer has
      provided a source fix to.  So bo-fixes is handled by them.

  2.  Developers who are going to provide packages for hamm take the
      plunge and move to libc6 as soon as it is available after bo goes
      gold.  If a security bug is found in their bo package they supply
      a source fix to one of the volunteers above.

If many packages are simply a recompile away,  these can also be done by
volunteers.  I'd say that packages should not be allowed into hamm if they
depend on libc5,  so there will be a need for a rash of rebuilds from bo
to hamm.

This sort of switch is never easy,  and it could easily happen every two
years.  To try and support multiple build environments will just make the
painful period more painful and longer.

--
Mark Shuttleworth
Thawte Consulting


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