Re: closing upstream bugs with debian/changelog
Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Communication is often more effective if people actually say things.
Agreed.
> Simply reopening the bug without explanation is as unhelpful as closing
> it without explanation so if I find myself doing that I generally try to
> understand why the bug has been closed so that I can try to explain why
> I feel it hasn't been fixed. Having some idea why the bug was closed in
> the first place makes this process a lot easier.
However I don't see how this leads to the conclusion that upstream
changes need to be documented in debian/changelog.
My problem with your reasoning is two-fold.
Firstly, exactly the same thing would happen if the maintainer sent
a message to the -done address saying that this bug is fixed in
verion x.y.z. AFAIK, this practice is accepted by the majority of
developers.
I contend that closing a bug in debian/changelog caused by an upstream
change with no explanation attached is equivalent to the above action,
at least as far as your scenario is concerned.
Secondly, in that particular instance, the assumption would be that the
maintainer had a fairly good reason to believe that the bug was indeed
fixed (let us ignore errant maintainers for the purpose of this discussion).
Now there are two possibilities if you cannot determine from looking at
the package why this bug was declared fixed.
One, the maintainer had made an error in judgement about the bug and
it is really not fixed. In that case we lose nothing by you reopening
the bug. Whether or not an explanation was sent in the closure message
is also irrelevant in this case.
Two, this bug was fixed in a way that you did not discover by looking
at the new package. I contend that if this is the case, that this bug
still exists in the package, albeit in the form of a documentation
defect.
IIRC this is the example that you quoted in a past thread where a
particular feature that you were requesting for was implemented but
not properly documented.
In this case, reopening the bug still loses us nothing as whatever
the fix is should be better documented. And debian/changelog is
certainly not the proper place for such documentation.
--
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