Re: [debian-devel] Re: Ancient architecture
[Ingo Juergensmann]
> So, we are currently not in freeze nor was the bug ("too slow building, out
> of disk space") release critical.
> There was only an impatient maintainer who complained about a situation that
> will be handled by the buildd admin. Actually there is therefore no problem
> to solve. The buildd infrastructure has no problems. There are simply no
> problems in Debian at all, that need to be fixed.[TM]
Actually, there is a problem to solve. You might not be aware of
this, but some package maintainers (like me) are trying to make sure
our packages make it into testing in time. This normally mean that no
new uplodas are made while a package is waiting to propagate into
testing (for 2, 5 or 10 days depending on priority), to make sure the
timer isn't reset, and that all problems detected in the period is
fixed on the next upload.
When a package fail to enter testing in 2, 5 or 10 days, it means the
next upload is delayed, and this again mean that the progress for this
package is slower than it should have been. This in turn make the
version of the package finally making into the next release lack some
of the fixes or features it chould have included if the turnaround
time is getting longer than required.
In addition, there are some of us building test CDs with Sarge, and
test these to make sure all the software in Sarge is well integrated.
If the software in Sarge is older then neccessary, and upgraded
shortly before the next release, the will not be much time left for
testing.
Because of this, I believe it is important that the new packages make
it into sarge as soon as possible, and every issue slowing this
propagation should be addressed.
Looking at
<URL:http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/distdiff.html.gz>,
I notice that m68k is the arch with the highest number of build
problems, but this will change over time. A month ago, the "top" arch
was mipsel. I expect the m68k developers to be able to fix this
problem shortly, because there are several dedicated developers
working on it.
But the fact that someone is working hard to fix the <arch-foo>
problem do not change the fact that it _is_ a problem when packages
fail to enter testing when their waiting period is up. If an arch is
falling behind, and do not have enough people working on it to fix the
problems, I do not believe it should be allowed to slow down the
release process in Debian. If it does seem to have enough people
working on it, I believe we should let it stay. Do m68k have enough
people working on it?
Check out <URL:http://popcon.debian.org/> if you are interesting in
knowing how many sarge/sid users on the different archs are reporting
to popularity-contest. I guess some archs could use more developers
and users. :)
Reply to: