Re: Uninstallable packages in woody
>>>>> "Anthony" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
Anthony> On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 12:56:33PM -0700, Thomas
Anthony> Bushnell, BSG wrote:
>> Michael Beattie <mjb@debian.org> writes: > Go and try to work
>> out what can and cannot be moved. go and take a look > at the
>> incredible complexity of inter-dependencies in packages. you'll
>> > quickly work out that what you propose is actually not that
>> easy. hence > why I usually take a while to pluck up the
>> courage and actually attempt > to fix these things. it is a
>> HUGE drain on time. I sent bug reports, saying "this conflicts
>> with that, one or both should be moved to extra"
Anthony> I'm not sure why you'd think a morass of bug reports is
Anthony> less of a time drain. Talk to Michael first, and work out
Anthony> a way of helping which actually *helps*, don't just do
Anthony> whatever you think's fun and then complain.
As a package maintainer, I'd actually appreciate bug reports on my
packages filed say after the release or some other time when changing
priorities is not going to be annoying. I'd especially appreciate
bugs that have useful suggestions on how to remove conflicts or on
which package should become extra. I probably wouldn't really
appreciate such bugs being RC, even though it is a policy violation;
in most cases I'd tolerate it but not exactly be happy. I'd certainly
reserve the right to downgrade if it were a complex situation that I
couldn't resolve.
Why does this save time? Because I'm doing the work not ftpmaster. There are a lot more of us individual developers than their are ftpmasters. I
might need to go talk to other package maintainers, but hey I can do
that. I've generally found that when I talk to another package
maintainer and ask them to change a priority with a clearly reasoned
argument they haven't expressed annoyance to me in the past.
Yeah, ftpmaster still needs to get involved when I eventually upload a
package that doesn't match the override file. I suspect it is easier
to deal with mail clearly outlining why an override change is a good
idea than to walk through the dependencies themselves.
In theory I could go check the unmet-foo list and not need the bugs
filed, so I can see an argument that the bugs are a waste of time that
way too. Honestly though, Debian makes it easy to close bugs; I'll
eventually have to upload a new package regardless of whether
ftpmaster or I changes the priority first and closing the bug in that
upload seems reasonable.
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