Re: Transition time: KDE, JACK, arts, sablotron, unixodbc, net-snmp, php, ...

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org>
> On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 09:29:58AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:

>> Interesting. I don't think anybody will miss autotrace in testing for
>> the time being (it exists mostly because it's a build-dependency of
>> something), but it would be nice if the maintainter was informed when
>> a package gets removed from testing.

> This is a reasonable concern, but the standing policy is that if a package
> is RC-buggy, it's a candidate for removal from testing at any time.

The fact that "it is a candidate for removal" is a completely
different state from "it _has_ been removed". I don't see how you can
suppose that the difference is not important for maintainers.

Also, the only RC bugginess that has applied to autotrace in recent
memory is that it was uninstallable in sid due to library transitions,
and not uploadable because its build-dependencies were not in order
yet (which was duly noted in the bug reports).  I do not think this
falls under a "maintainer himself ignores his bugs and therefore
deserves to be left in the dark" heading.

Well, the build-dependencies became fixed about 4 days ago (courtesy
of a NMU by yours truly). Is 4 days enough to get something removed
from testing?

> We would like to get notices to maintainers set up, but in the
> majority of cases the presence of an RC bug on the package is
> already ample notice.

No it's not.

   RC bug, still in testing -> fixing this is very important, because
       it may hold up the testing migration of other packages.

   RC bug, not in testing -> fixing this only affects this one
       package, and is therefore not so urgent.

The removal from testing drastically changes which priorities I should
use in allocating the time I can use for Debian stuff.

-- 
Henning Makholm                             "I've been staying out of family
                                   conversations. Do I get credit for that?"