Re: A way _not_ to handle bugs
On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 12:40:21PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>...
> On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 12:27:32PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>
> > first of all, if you downgrade a bug only a good hour after I upgraded
> > it, it would be nice if you would:
> > - Cc me
> > - send a better explanation than "This is not a missing dependency, feh"
>
> If you are going to upgrade bugs to RC severity without talking to the
> maintainers first, it would be nice if you would be right.
I have explained how this can produce non-working package combinations.
If you do immediately lower the severity of a bug I raised the severity
of again, could you please at least put my in the Cc header of the
message you send to the BTS?
> > In my testing, e.g. php4 from woody together with php4-mysql from sid is
> > _not_ a working combination.
>
> $ apt-cache show php4-mysql
> Package: php4-mysql
> Version: 4:4.3.10-12
> Depends: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libmysqlclient12, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, phpapi-20020918, php4-common (= 4:4.3.10-12)
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> php4-mysql does not depend on php4 because the php4 package is *not*
> required to be installed in order for php4-mysql to be usable: installing
> any of the packages that provide phpapi-20020918 is sufficient to give you
> a php4 engine that can be used with php4-mysql. php4-mysql does not depend
> on any particular package providing the interface, because it has no way of
> knowing which one the user wants.
>
> The actual bug you're describing, therefore, is that the package
> relationships do not prevent you from having multiple PHP engines
> co-installed on your system that each provide different extension ABIs.
> This is a well-known bug that's irritating but not release-critical, and
> fixing it in sarge would not be at all straightforward.
>...
I'd consider this RC, and I think there might be good solutions that are
not too difficult (e.g. Conflicts with the woody versions). But with
this explanation, I understand your point.
Communication is important.
Why haven't you simply sent this explanation together with the control
message and a Cc to me? This way I would have understood why you've
downgraded it (whether I agree or not), and instead of becoming angry I
would have thought about possible solutions for this bug (with this
information I didn't have before).
With this information you've now shared with me, my suggestion would be:
All the packages providing phpapi-20020918 are built from the same
source package.
What about providing php-4.3.10 and letting packages like php4-mysql
depend on such a version-specific provides?
This would also make sense in cases like the ZTS transitions were you
could change this Provides and automatically have all dependencies
correct.
Perhaps this suggestion doesn't work for some reason. But if you'd have
shared the reasons why you don't think this issue was RC, you'd have
helped me to think about ways how to fix this issue properly instead of
sending an unfriendly email.
I do admit that my email was overly unfriendly, but I hope you can
understand that a bit of information from you would have been better.
> Steve Langasek
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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