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Re: Questions about testing



On Tue, Jan 02, 2001 at 02:15:29PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> The idea is that for a package to get into testing it should:
> 
> 	* be synchronised across architectures
> 	* have all its dependencies met, and not break the dependencies
> 	  of other packages
> 	* not have any RC bugs
> 
> The first two of those points can be automatically checked, and are. The
> latter point, though, requires people to actually try the package,
> and report any problems.
> 
> For the latter to be of any value, there are two further requirements. One
> is that you give people a little time, both to install the package and to
> leave it around long enough that people have a chance to see if it breaks
> in normal use, or similar.

Yeah, well, "long enough" means different things for different packages.

For some toy package it could be well over the current requirements.

On the other hand, severe (== RC) breakage in an Essential package, or even
those that are non-essential but still very popular (the emacsen, vim,
XFree86), is typically noticed right away.

Consider that when I manage to hork up X, I know about it within hours of
dinstall.  Likewise, a few days ago when Wichert busted the vim postinst,
he was told about it quite fast indeed.

I don't have any concrete recommendations for how to take this into
account, but I certainly think that a 14-day waiting period for packages
like these is excessive.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson             |     To stay young requires unceasing
Debian GNU/Linux                |     cultivation of the ability to unlearn
branden@debian.org              |     old falsehoods.
http://www.debian.org/~branden/ |     -- Robert Heinlein

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