On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 10:43:05AM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:
> > If your package isn't going to be suitable for release; it should probably
> > be in experimental instead, which is even autobuilt these days. There's
> > almost no reason to have RC bugs that are open longer than a couple of
> > weeks these days.
> So do you suggest that I should have let tetex 3.0 migrate to testing,
> even though there are still a couple of important issues with it, and
> even though it would have made half of the packages that depend on it in
> testing RC-buggy, either because they were uninstallable, or wouldn't
> work?
No, that would be "unsuitable for release". Which is a problem that
should either be fixed quickly, or means you're trying to make a big
enough change that you should be working out how to get it done without
breaking other packages in a separate area, such as experimental.
"Delay transition to testing" bugs are particularly bad because they
usually don't explain what the delay is and thus make it hard for people
who're interested in helping to know what to work on. tetex-base's bug
(#334722), eg, says:
The teTeX-3.0 package should not migrate to testing too soon, even
if they are free of RC bugs for a couple of days. I'd like to have
more packages recompiled with them before they're let in.
It was filed 19th of October, just under two months ago -- surely it's not
"too soon" anymore; but otoh, the last upload was just a couple of days
ago. The last RC bug on tetex-base was closed a few weeks ago, afaics,
which doesn't seem "too soon" either, and the only open important bugs
are very old licensing issues and something about the latex install being
slightly non-standard, so presumably they're not the hold up. And heck,
October's long enough ago that maybe there're new reasons to not add it
to testing and the above's completely misleading now.
> I really think that such things should be sorted out in unstable first,
> and only if the fixed packages are available should it migrate to
> testing. At least if testing serves any purpose.
The purpose of testing isn't to make it okay to put broken packages in
unstable. If the packages in unstable aren't broken; then it's appropriate
to put them in testing. So yes, fine -- sort them out in unstable first,
but do it *quickly*; ie over a matter of days or weeks, not months.
A year before sarge's release, we were at around 400 RC bugs in testing,
and 600 in unstable; today, a year before etch's release, we're at 600
RC bugs in testing, 1300 in unstable. Just looking at the testing count,
that's a six month delay right there; looking at the unstable count,
it's either something like a twelve month delay, or an indication huge
chunks of unstable -- including packages like tetex -- won't make it
into etch if we release on time.
Cheers,
aj
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