Re: On Bugs

["Sean 'Shaleh' Perry" <shaleh@valinux.com>]

On 03-Oct-2000 Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>>>"Sean" == Sean 'Shaleh' Perry <shaleh@valinux.com> writes:
> 
> 
>  Sean> However I want a bug severity high enough that the maintainer
>  Sean> takes the bug seriously.  A package with priority extra or
>  Sean> optional should not be able to affect a release, grave bug or
>  Sean> not.
> 
>       I find it very disturbing that a Debian developer thinks it is
>  reasonable!!!  not to take a bug seriously unless the severity of the
>  bug is ``high enough''. 
> 

as you said, you are very busy and have no time.  Many maintainers have this
issue.  A pool of normal bugs either makes their packages look decently clean
or at least trustwrothy.  However, many packages have bugs in normal that are
actually problems.  As others have suggested, a little more grey area in the
definition of bug severity would be handy.

I do not believe in inflating bug reports just to get them noticed. 
Maintainers (like me or you) know when this is done and simply downgrade the
bug.  However I do believe that important bugs are just that and a violation of
policy is not the only reason a bug should be considered important.

Because of a concern for release, there is a desire to make all bugs 'normal'. 
I find this to be problematic.  Numerous bugs were downgraded because we did
not want a package to hold up release.  Admittedly some of those bugs were not
'grave', others were simply on packages which were deemed unnecessary or
unimportant.  The bug is no less important on that package, just in the scheme
of Debian.

So here is yet another "maybe we need a neew ..." and say that perhaps a bug
should be marked "release critical" independant of its current severity.  Or
perhaps only grave is release critical and we up/downgrade bugs from there.