Re: Gnome to be removed from debian?
On Sat, Feb 13, 1999 at 02:10:31AM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 1999 at 07:51:10PM -0500, Ben Collins wrote:
> > > Well, once the freeze is enforced on potato, it will be a snap to
> > > settle the GNOME apps down. Release manager will just say: "Okay,
> > > boys and girls, we now have gnome-libs 1.x.y, recompile with it.
> > > Anything else will be treated as a release critical bug."
> >
> > This kind of thinking is what slows down releases and prolongs freezes.
> > You cannot just dump anything into unstable and figure that if it's
> > broke it will be fixed at freeze time. The general consensus _should_
> > be that what you put into unstable, you do as if it were in freeze, and
> > plan on it being frozen at any time so we don't have these problems.
>
> I was not referring to the explicitly broken package dependencies,
> but on those that are not defined: for example, I have packages in
> unstable that depend on libgtk 1.1.x. Which libgtk should I choose?
That's the problem, there should only be one of each major version (ie
1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc.) Not each minor version increase. This isn't your
fault, it's the fault of the libgtk maintainer, and it's causing you,
other maintainers that link against libgtk and users lots, of problems.
> Normally one would think that the latest is the only one - but no,
> instead we have ten of them. None older than two months (well, I
> don't know exactly, but they're all rather new). And if I do pick
> the current one, I'll have to recompile in three days.
Again, I don't think any libs that have this many dependencies should
be released into our distribution, even unstable, in a snapshot
fashion. The maintainers are taking the "release often" idea to a place
it is not meant to be. We did not included every release of kernel
2.1.x for a good reason, and as such should take the same measures here.
There is no way to really test libgtk and the apps using it if there are
nothing but problems surrounding the dependencies.
> To the current libgtk* dependencies there is no real solution. If the
> final 1.2 version doesn't come out by potato freeze, we'll do what
> we've done with slink - just take the current (then it was libgtk1.1_1.1.3)
> version and make it 'the right one', and request recompilation of the
> packages depending on other libgtk* versions. Recompiling to fix a
> problem is easy - constant recompiling not fixing the real problem is
> simply unacceptable.
Frozen should not be the place for this to happen, unstable should only
release libgtk every so often and let the packages that depend on it
sort out there internal bugs before releasing a new version and forcing
a recompile. Last time I tried installing a lot of gnome stuff I ended
up with 4 different versions of libgtk having to be installed and 2
other version that were cruft left over that nothing depended on.
Unacceptible, even in unstable.
> (I hope libgtk* maintainer won't be offended by any of this, I know
> it is vis maior.)
I hope it gives them a wake up call.
> > Unstable is not a package dumping ground, look at the glibc 2.1
> > packages, which are not even going to be put into unstable until they are
> > tested.
>
> No, I didn't say that. project/experimental exists.
But yet we are testing this horde of experienmental/alpha software in
unstable and causing huge problems that clearly have no means of
sorting themselves out?
--
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Ben Collins <b.m.collins@larc.nasa.gov> Debian GNU/Linux
UnixGroup Admin - Jordan Systems Inc. bcollins@debian.org
------ -- ----- - - ------- ------- -- The Choice of the GNU Generation
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