Re: Firefox, the Release and what should a debian developer do?
On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 10:15:05PM +0200, Jens Schmalzing wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Wouter Verhelst writes:
>
> > Andrew Pollock wrote:
>
> > > So go forth and package it, throw it in unstable,
> >
> > s/unstable/experimental
>
> I agree with Andrew. The package should go into sid immediately. At
> normal urgency, there's plenty of time to file a release critical bug
> if need be.
But unstable is a staging area for packages you eventually want in a
released Debian. And a release candidate of firefox is not something you
potentially want in any Debian release. However, since the release
candidate most likely will give you a good indication whether or not it
will cause unforseen problems, you _can_ upload it to experimental.
Unstable does _not_ mean the packages itself may be unstable etc, the
ultimate goal of any upload is to make a good collection of software,
and I think that generally non-released versions simply do not belong
there, hence should not be uploaded to unstable. Of course there are
exceptions, where for example a release candidate is much more stable
than the last release, but that are just that -- exceptions.
Plus, as somebody else noted, the Release Manager has said he wants this
kind of stuff in experimental.
> > That's what it's for; and that's how the GNOME team recently tested
> > GNOME 2.6 before they uploaded it to unstable.
>
> That's a different scale, isn't it? Gnome consists of a few dozen
> packages, many of which are libraries that other packages depend on.
> Flaky Gnome packages could easily fry half the installation, I don't
> see that danger with firefox.
The locale packages have a strict depends on version 0.8, once you
upload 0.9, the locale packages will follow, so downgrades will become a
major PITA. Sid too should be a collection of packages in a releasable
state, testing is for helping with that, but can only work if this
condition holds true most of the time. Uploading a release-candidate
to sid doesn't help here.
> > If you want to try this, coordinate with the release team (at
> > -release@l.d.o), and only upload to unstable when you think it's ready.
>
> We will eventually release sarge, not sid.
You cannot upload to Sarge, you upload via sid. Again, sid is just for
finding out the most obvious unforseen problems, any package being hold
up in sid and not progressing to sarge is extra difficult for release
management.
--Jeroen
--
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl
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