Re: Bug#27823: proftpd: non-maintainer upload (alpha) diffs
Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net> writes:
> [ Moving this to debian-devel, discussion doesn't belong in the bug report. ]
[ Killed the Cc: line. ]
> James Troup wrote:
> > There is no i386 port in as much as i386 maintainers 99.5% of the time
> > _don't_ compile packages from scratch, which is when over 50% of the
> > problems (at least on m68k, and judging by the diff's I've seen from
> > Paul, similar-ish on alpha) show up.
>
> I don't get it. How do people upload a new version of a package w/o
> compiling it from scratch?
They don't compile from freshly unpacked source. Problems which
aren't noticed are, for example, a debian/rules clean which depends on
debian/rules build having at least partially run, or a debian/rules
which depends on something in debian/* being executable (when
dpkg-source -x only makes debian/rules executable).
Another thing is that i386 maintainers _won't_ notice is two of our
most common problems: YAFHIC386 in debian/control's Architecture and
debian/files not being removed during debian/rules clean.
There really isn't an i386 port.
> I seem to be hearing the argument that binary-only NMU's can be made without
> waiting, while a normal NMU requires that you wait for the maintainer to
> have a reasonable time to do something about a bug report. I don't
> understand why this would be so.
Because I refuse to wait for maintainers who take weeks and weeks (if
not months or years [This was actually the case till Guy finally
purged the old style source format packages]) to respond to trivial
bugs; there is no reason why non-i386 users and developers should be
held up by slow-to-respond i386/source maintainers, when we have
already done the work and found the fix for their bugs.
> [1] I recognize the value of binary-only NMU's when a new port is being
> started and you can't afford to wait on the maintainer,
Eh? Why should a port be able to afford to wait on i386-maintainers
just because it's no longer new?
> and you may need to make a lot of changes,
All ports needs to make a lot of changes because so many source
packages are broken. It's got little or nothing to do with the
newness of the port (if you look at the {binary-,}NMU's and bug
reports, they aren't predominantly from the new ports, but rather the
older ones (m68k && alpha)).
> and your build environment may be non-standard.
Eh? Define ``standard'', please? I rather hope you don't mean "what
i386 uses".
> But as a port matures, their value decreses.
Says who and why?
> I think porters are mostly making binary-only NMU's now out of
> tradition.
No, it's not tradition at all, I simply want to get things done. If I
find a bug in a package I'm compiling for m68k, I will fix it, and
forward the patch to the BTS. I've done this for years and will
continue to do it, unless someone provides me with a) a better system
and/or b) reasons not to.
--
James
[Bah, gnus' auto-signature erasure is a PITA when footnotes below the
signature are used]
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