(Kevin: what's the deal with Bug#19563? It seems a good sample of a bug
that seems like it should be able to be trivially addressed and closed,
but which hasn't been for almost three years now. It might be helpful
for QA to have some idea why this might happen)
On Sat, Sep 30, 2000 at 11:37:39PM +0000, Roland Rosenfeld wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:
> > important any other bug which is a severe violation of Debian policy
> > (violates a must directive)
> Bad idea. How do you define "severe violation"?
As a violation of a must (rather than a should) directive. See the latest
versions of policy.
> > We've got almost 11,000 open, unique, non-wishlist bugs at the
> > moment. That's a lot. Probably unacceptably many [0].
> Some housekeeping (closing old bugs, which are already fixed, either
> by maintainer or upstream, applying patches, which are provided in the
> bug reports,...) would reduce this number a lot. But this is a job,
> which has to be done by the maintainers (IMHO only the maintainer or
> the bug submitter should close bug reports)...
One thing you can do is mark the bug as fixed, if you're fairly sure it has
been fixed, but you're not the maintainer or the submitter.
> 11000 bug reports cannot be processed by one single person, but we
> have to divide this job to _all_ maintainers (especially every
> maintainer for his packages).
But you can randomly choose a couple of dozen bugs, or a couple of dozen
packages, or a couple of dozen maintainers, and help tidy up some of their
bug pages.
> > So what would be nice is seeing lots of those fixed. Maybe we should
> > have some bugsquash months instead of just bugsquash weekends.
> Does a bugsquash allow to NMU normal or wishlist bugs? If I remember
> policy correct, a NMU is only allowed to do minimal changes to the
> packages to fix RC bugs, but it's quite hard to do the housekeeping
> job, which would fix tons of bugs with a little bit diligence...
From the developer's reference:
Bug fixes to unstable by non-maintainers are also acceptable, but only
as a last resort or with permission. Try the following steps first,
and if they don't work, it is probably OK to do an NMU:
* Make sure that the package bug is in the Debian Bug Tracking
System (BTS). If not, submit a bug.
* Email the maintainer, and offer to help fix the package bug.
Give it a few days.
* Go ahead and fix the bug, submitting a patch to the right bug in
the BTS. Build the package and test it as discussed in Section
6.2.3, `Checking the package prior to upload'. Use it locally.
* Wait a couple of weeks for a response.
* Email the maintainer, asking if it is OK to do an NMU.
* Double check that your patch doesn't have any unexpected side
effects. Make sure your patch is as small and as non-disruptive
as it can be.
* Wait another week for a response.
* Go ahead and do the source NMU, as described in Section 7.4, `How
to do a source NMU'.
By my reading, if there's a patch that seems perfectly workable already
in the BTS, and that's been there for a few weeks, you're pretty well
authorised to NMU straight away, although it's still polite to contact
the maintainer first and see what, if anything, is up.
> > At the very least anyone with some spare time on their hands might
> > like to help with merging duplicate reports
> Another point of housekeeping. Why are there maintainers, who don't
> merge the bug reports of their packages? This doesn't take much time
> for 10-20 packages, but it takes much time for 11000 bugs.
Why are there users who don't check if a bug already exists, and file
duplicate bugs? *shrug* We're all volunteers, we're not perfect.
> > and sending in patches to existing easily fixed bugs.
> But does it make sense to send in patches, if the maintainer doesn't
> merge them into the package? There are many bugs older a year with
> patches, which are simply ignored by the maintainer. It's quite
> frustrating...
In that case you can probably do an NMU. Of course, there are then
bugs like 19563 which have had patches, and been NMUed, but which the
maintainer has then reverted without any comment at all.
Cheers,
aj
--
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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