Re: Future releases of Debian
Andreas Metzler writes:
>Using my memory of my last visit on
>http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl
>and from reading diverse mailinglists I think the major issues are:
There are probably other issues than the ones you mention below which
really ought to be fixed prior to release, such as
* the presence of known non-free material in main
* the base bugs at http://bugs.qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/base.cgi
* the rather disturbing number of priority violations at
http://qa.debian.org/debcheck.php?dist=sid&list=priority&arch=ANY
Optional depending on extra has been common for a long time, and
probably can't be sorted out quickly, but it would definitely be nice if
the other types of violations (important on standard, etc.) could be
fixed. Some especially egregious cases:
dselect (required) depends on libstdc++5, libgcc1 (both important)
Upgrade priority of the latter two, or downgrade dselect.
debconf (important) depends on liblocale-gettext-perl (standard).
Presumably liblocale-gettext-perl should become important.
Or debconf could be replaced in 'important' with cdebconf, of course.
;-)
libgnutls7 (important) depends on libopencdk4, zlib1g, libgcrypt1,
libtasn1-0, and liblzo1 (all standard)
libgnutls7 has to be important because it's depended on by libldap2.
That means that all those other packages need to be made 'important',
I believe. Luckily that's all -- all of those packages only depend
on 'important' or higher-priority packages.
Regarding the ones you mentioned:
>- Gnome2 in testing
It's 'mostly' there now. The packages that aren't need specific bug
fixes, I believe, and most of them are getting their fixes.
>- KDE3 in testing
KDE3 is mostly waiting for one bug which affects m68k only.
Namely, bug #196564. I wish there was a way to speed up m68k testing,
but I don't know of one.
There are other open bugs against kde packages which are fixed, and more
than a few NMU-fixed bugs, but I can't see any other actual RC bugs.
The kdelibs/kdebase maintainer, Christopher L. Cheney
<ccheney@debian.org>, appears to be either MIA or (more likely) on
vacation; I don't know which. Given that, KDE packages are really in
very good shape. I would love to see them in 'testing' soon, but we
apparently have to wait for the m68k people.
>- Gcc3.3 transition (i.e. recompiling and fixing bugs _both_ in the
> packages and the compiler suite)
This is in decent shape, but there are a disturbing number of libraries
which still haven't been recompiled for the new g++ (and a lot of
programs, but presumably some of them are waiting for the libraries).
See http://people.debian.org/~willy/gcc-transition/ .
I suggest bugging the maintainers of the libraries listed at
http://people.debian.org/~willy/gcc-transition/lib-packages-2.95
first.
Of those in particular, these might call for different treatment:
aspseek:
Important bug to this effect for 134 days. Package should probably
be hijacked or removed. Or it could be NMUed, of course.
db2:
This is pretty old... who still uses it, anyway? More specifically,
does anyone use libdb2++, and if so, are they only things which aren't
supposed to be transitioned?
Surprisingly, this seems to be maintained by the same ~willy who wrote
the script to find packages which haven't completed the C++ transition...
so maybe he knows something here.
kdebindings:
Orphaned package managed by QA. Should be NMUed, adopted, or removed.
kxmleditor:
Grave bug to this effect for 155 days. Package should probably be
hijacked or removed. Or it could be NMUed, of course.
open-amulet:
Looks pretty abandoned. Package should probably be hijacked or
removed (or forcibly orphaned, or whatever...)
rumba-manifold:
Normal bug to this effect for 105 days.
rumbagui:
Supposedly a 'major rev in cvs' was coming out 'soon' at the end of
April, and this was waiting for it. Status?
tcl-sql:
Serious bug to this effect for 89 days -- with patch. Should
probably be NMUed.
xerces:
Normal bug to this effect for 31 days -- with patch. Should probably
be NMUed.
>- XFree86 4.3
Information on the status of this seems to be readily available,
thankfully, so I won't repeat it.
>- Debian Installer
This seems to be the web page:
http://people.debian.org/~pere/debian-installer/
Of the unfinished items in the TODO list, the 'list of common mistakes
that need to be corrected' look like the easiest for the uninitiated to
fix and submit patches for. The other items are a remarkably short
list.
Summary of the ports status: i386 is in good shape. ia64 and powerpc
are working, with small fixes needed for powerpc which are not yet in
(but will be soon). Alpha and HPPA look close to working. mips/mipsel
were waiting on one bug, which seems to have been fixed recently; I
can't tell whether it needs anything else. Sparc seems to be taking a
while; s390, m68k, and arm seem to need some serious work.
Good luck finding more people to work on those last three.
The bugs in installer-related packages are listed at:
http://bugs.qa.debian.org/cgi-bin/debian-installer.cgi
(Installer people, feel free to correct my impressions if they're
wrong.)
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden at gcc.gnu.org>
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
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