Re: 6 days till Bug Horizon
On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 06:05:49PM -0500, Michael Stone wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 24, 2000 at 12:20:52PM -0600, David Starner wrote:
> > > Package: gnome-napster (debian/main).
> > > Maintainer: Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org>
> > > 57207 gnome-napster: Crashes on searching and downloading fixed in 0.4.1
> > > 57208 Interface locks HARD when downloading
> >
> > Nasty bugs, but they're livable. I would tack up some notices
> > about "highly unstable" and downgrade these to normal.
>
> Why do we want "highly unstable" software in our stable distribution?
Because it's useful, nonetheless? We had Gnome in our last release
at 0.31 something. If it were the only Napster client in Debian,
I'd be more adamant about keeping it.
> IMHO, it needs to be kept to unstable until it works reliably.
Nothing's 100% reliable. The question is, is it reliable enough to
be useful. I would argue yes for gnome-napster. I lived with the
bugs until gnapster started working for me. (I don't know whether
the working version of gnapster is in frozen.)
> This
> relates to the larger question of why we're so determined to package the
> whole world, including programs with version numbers like 0.4.1; just
> because something's been announced on freshmeat doesn't mean it's ready
> for stable.
Because frequently 0.4.1 can be a useful program, at least in the open
source world. When a package is the best or only tool for its job, we can
frequently overlook many shortcomings because we need the tool. Is it
useful is the question that should be asked, not is it stable or is it
cool.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
Only a nerd would worry about wrong parentheses with
square brackets. But that's what mathematicians are.
-- Dr. Burchard, math professor at OSU
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