Re: [OT] lazy maintainers
On 08 Aug 2001 15:21:39 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On 8 Aug 2001, Jared Johnson wrote:
>
> > On 08 Aug 2001 01:42:10 -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > > refusing to maintain a package, and refusing to let anyone else help
> > > is one of the more evil evil things a debian developer can do.
> >
> > Refusing to upload a package is not the same thing as refusing to
> > maintain a package. myth is not uploading the package. you can't make
> > him.
>
> Yes we can.
you mean you can make him upload?
> *Please* remember that sid is there to be broken. People were disappointed
> when Sam Hartman fsck'ed up PAM, but nobody said he was a bad
> maintainer. After all, when using sid, it's not abnormal to end up with a
> broken system.
>
> If mozilla would be very important for a system to run, then I would
> understand this lack of updates.
In any case, no one would have accused Sam Hartman of being a bad
maintainer if he had not uploaded PAM packages as soon and avoided the
problem, either. It's his call, and people really ought to respect
this. Yes, it's acceptible for a maintainer to upload possibly-broken
packages into sid, but it's also acceptible for them to wait and upload
working packages.
> > in other news, i don't think the non-US deal is entering into it
> > anymore. I believe that myth is probably just continuing to hack on the
> > package and doesn't want to upload something sub-optimal into debian.
>
> Why not? After all, that's what sid is for!
>
> > Even if you think you can do better, which you can't, it's not your
> > package, it's his.
>
> Uh?
>
> That rule is stated in policy, yes, but it's not absolute. If people do a
> bad job maintaining their packages, it doesn't count. Sorry.
Yeah, let me recant that, as per anthony towns' correction; nonetheless,
Frank is doing a great job maintaining his packages.
> > As a few have pointed out, none of the things which
> > everyone complains about has actually affected a release of Debian yet.
> > Despite the convenience of testing/unstable, the main goal of a package
> > maintainer is to actually make a good release of Debian happen, not to
> > make bleeding-edgers happy.
>
> Sid *is* bleeding edge. Never forget that.
>
> Besides: uploading a suboptimal package has advantages in that you
> immediately find bugs in your package. If you don't, you get like 40
> bugreports at a time, which is annoying.
>
> Especially if you don't fix 'em immediately, since users tend to yell at
> you, then.
As above; yeah sid is bleeding edge, but there's no rule that sayes
maintainers *must* upload bleeding edge packages to it, or that not
doing so constitutes bad maintanence. It can be helpful, but that
doesn't mean that (1) it's necessarily helpful in a particular
maintainer's situation, or that (2) a maintainer has to do it even if it
would be helpful to them :)
> <snip>
> > "Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me". Don't assume that because
> > there's a slightly long-ish delay now,
>
> "slightly long-ish"?
>
> *Pa-lease*! It's been about over a month! It's got one grave bug, and
> three serious! That's not "slightly long-ish", that's extremely long.
>
> If your package is bug-free, you're welcome to wait a month or longer
> to update it. If the bug is damn hard to fix, you're welcome to ask
> upstream for help and wait for a year or so to fix it. But if there's
> errors in *your* wrapper-scripts that load the browser, or if there's
> errors in *your* maintainer-scripts that install it, I expect a fixed
> version ASAP.
>
> And no, I refuse to accept that it takes over a month to fix errors in
> scripts.
>
> *That* is called "lousy maintaining".
>
> Not even mentioning the 8 normal bugs and the wishlist-bugs...
didn't you say something about sid being bleeding edge :)
this still doesn't constitute an NMU completely against the maintainer's
wishes, maybe even if we were frozen IMHO, but we're not frozen yet in
any case
>
> <snip>
> > As I mentioned,
> > it would appear that the issues which held up post-M18 releases are now
> > non-issues. If you want to find out what the issues are, perhaps you
> > should diplomatically approach myth in private. If he doesn't answer
> > you, perhaps it's because you and a hundred other people are insulting
> > him, so perhaps you should go find something more productive to do.
>
> perhaps he should. I'm sorry, I don't even use mozilla (since my system
> can't handle it -- a P166), but this is simply bad work.
as above, you shouldn't call him a bad maintainer because he's waiting,
just as you should call him a bad maintainer because he jumped the gun
> > > sorry but that is rediculous. NMU mozilla.
> >
> > This would be decidedly more ridiculous. The current situation is not
> > really anywhere near ridiculous. Everything that embeds mozilla is
> > still happy with 0.9.1, and people are now able to use all the key
> > features in mozilla. Mozilla 0.9.3 is a point release, folks, it'll
> > make things go kinda faster or something. If you want it so badly, go
> > get the unofficial packages that are widely available. Don't complain
> > that the delay is hurting Debian development, because it's not, and
> > everyone's ignorant and pointless complaining is probably hurting Debian
> > more in that it makes a hard working debian developer (Myth) wish he had
> > never thought about maintaining mozilla and it fills up folks' mailboxes
> > with clueless, cynical, half-witted attempts at slander.
>
> If he's a hard working DD, which I will not deny, why is it that hard to
> upload newer packages that fix grave and serious bugs?
that's his fish to fry as long as it doesn't screw a debian release to
hell, and it hasn't come that close to doing so. yeah, if nobody did
anything at all about it, it might; but people are paying attention, and
i don't doubt that the guy we're all arguing about is paying attention
as well.
Sid is indeed around to be screwed with and break, and if a maintainer
doesn't fix a breakage right away, that shouldn't really be viewed any
worse than if he uploaded something broken.
yeah it's OK to upload half-assed debs to sid, but it's not a requisite.
btw, this is getting to be less of a flame war now, i like it
--
Jared Johnson
solomon@futureks.net
GPG Key ID: DF 28 CD 64
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