Re: [2002-03-03] Release Status Update

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>]

On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 01:32:45AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:

> Tomorrow, or in the very near future, most of the following packages
> will be dropped from testing due to release-critical bugs of one type
> or another.
> 
>         addressbook  gtk-engines-flat  scid

I don't see why scid is being removed.  It has no release-critical bugs, the
version in woody is built for all woody architectures, and none of its
dependencies were listed as being removed:

Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4), libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 (>= 1:2.95.4-0.010810),
tcl8.3 (>= 8.3.0), tk8.3 (>= 8.3.0), xlibs (>> 4.1.0), zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.3),
python

I assume that it must be because of bugs that have since been fixed in
unstable, though I confess to not understanding how this works.

There is a much newer version in unstable which appears to be held up only
by the lack of an arm package.  The buildd log seems to indicate that this
is definitely not scid's problem, but tcl's (#130187).  This is only an
important bug, though, and tcl8.3 is still in woody.

>         cxref        heartbeat         timidity

There is a fix in the BTS for heartbeat; I will NMU.

> There's also the one the testing scripts generate which give an indication
> of how buggy the versions of the packages in testing are, at:
> 
> 	http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/testing_probs.html
> 
> This list, unfortunately, is generated heuristically rather than
> directly from information in the bug tracking system. So you only get
> an approximate number of bugs against each package, and you *don't*
> get a list of which bugs they were exactly, and it can be difficult
> or impossible to find out. There are other problems with it too --
> notably that it doesn't take into account bugs that have been fixed
> today by moving a package from unstable into testing. It's useful as
> a general guide to packages that I'm probably considering removing,
> not as a sole source.

How is this list generated?  This would be useful to know when trying to
determine what the problems are with a package.

-- 
 - mdz