description of woody release problem
This document describes the current situation of the release process.
This doesn't help the woody release in Anthony's sense --- it doesn't
fix any bug, but I think clarifying the problem is important.
The problem of the woody release is not that Debian is too big.
In fact, Debian is too small. Debian needs more people.
I wrote a shell script and got an interesting statistics.
#!/bin/sh
echo -n "base source packages:"
grep-dctrl -F Section base Sources | sed -e /^Package/!d | sort | uniq | wc -l
echo -n "maintainers of base source packages:"
grep-dctrl -F Section base Sources | sed -e /^Maintainer/!d | sort | uniq \
| wc -l
echo -n "source packages with the priority standard or higher:"
grep-dctrl -e -F Priority "(required)|(important)|(standard)" Sources \
| sed -e /^Package/!d | sort | uniq | wc -l
echo -n "maintainers of source packages with the priority standard or higher:"
grep-dctrl -e -F Priority "(required)|(important)|(standard)" Sources \
| sed -e /^Maintainer/!d | sort | uniq | wc -l
echo -n "source packages:"
cat Sources | sed -e /^Package/!d | sort | uniq | wc -l
echo -n "maintainers:"
cat Sources | sed -e /^Maintainer/!d | sort | uniq | wc -l
Put this script and the uncompressed Sources file in the current directory,
and run the script. Here is my result (maybe out of date):
base source packages: 90
maintainers of base source packages: 53
source packages with the priority standard or higher: 143
maintainers of source packages with the priority standard or higher: 83
source packages: 5040
maintainers: 948
Don't be fooled by the last line. The current goal of the release
process is to fix all RC bugs of the base and standard packages.
Having 900+ maintainers does not mean that all of them are working
for this goal. Most of the packages have nothing to do with it.
People who want to make it difficult for a developer to upload a new
package to the Debian archive may be aware of this fact and be trying
to concentrate the human resources to the release process. They may
have a good intention, but their proposal is wrong. You can't force
Debian maintainers to fix another package by taking their optional/extra
package from them.
Anthony is right in that:
* we need to fix bugs to advance to the next stage of the release process
* ONE way to do it is to hack the source code by yourself
You need not be able to send a patch to contribute to the release process.
Gathering people who can fix bugs is another way. Be warned, however,
because it is much harder than the do-it-by-yourself solution.
The current scheme of the release process is the right thing in some
sense --- it has "no RC bug". At least it works. I think it has
a wishlist bug. Debian should provide a motivation to fix someone
else's package.
--
Oohara Yuuma <oohara@libra.interq.or.jp>
Graduate-school of Science, Kyoto University
PGP key (key ID F464A695) http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/pub-key.txt
Key fingerprint = 6142 8D07 9C5B 159B C170 1F4A 40D6 F42E F464 A695
I always put away what I take.
--- Ryuji Akai, "Star away"
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