Re: buildd administration
Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:
>> > "A far-east document is typeset in a certain encoding" doesn't sound like
>> > an RC bug; and therefore not something that should hold up transitioning
>> > to testing.
>> The package with the RC bug is debian-reference, which builds documents
>> in different languages from sgml source for its binary packages. If
>> this package fails to create one of its documents, this is a FTBFS and
>> of course RC.
>
> Sure, but it's not an RC bug in teTeX -- and it can be downgraded by
> simply disabling the generation of that document in developers-reference.
Yes, but there were lots of bugs like this. Personally, I thought and
still think that testing should rather not be in an inconsistent state
where some packages cannot be rebuilt, and therefore that teTeX 3.0
should not enter testing unless there's at least a fixed package in sid
with good chances to propagate to testing without delay, or rather in
testing itself.
>> > Uh, no, it shouldn't. Next December is when sarge will be released,
>> A year before sarge's release was June 2004, and at that time all
>> unenlightened DDs believed we would freeze on August 1st (or something
>> around that date) and release in September + x. For that very reason I
>> handled teTeX much more conservatively than I had done had I known that
>> I had one year left[1],
>
> Which is to say, had you handled tetex then, the way you are now, the
> RC bug count would have been worse, and thus would like have not dropped
> to zero by the time sarge did release a year later.
I don't think so - on the one hand I had much more time in summer 04, on
the other hand I would have stopped working on 2.0.2, which took away
quite some working and thinking time during that year, and especially
during the half year where teTeX-3.0 "rot" in experimental and sarge was
not yet released..
>> That sounds all very nice. But currently, I didn't even have time to
>> build a lists of packages we filed RC bugs on, and track whether they
>> have been properly fixed. Before that I can't judge whether it should
>> proceed to testing, or which packages would need to be removed.
>
> You can use usertags to track bugs fairly easily. From the RC buglist,
> the only open RC bug mentioning tetex is against gnuplot, and has had
> a patch since it was filed four and half months ago -- that's exactly
> the sort of thing that should be fixed far more quickly than it has been.
There are I think 6 more; look for the strings "dvi" or "pdf" -
unfortunately the last one also gives some xpdf code security bugs ATM.
>> I (and some others) manage teTeX as a volunteer in my free time. If
>> Debian thinks that this is not enough, it should either help us with
>> manpower or drop teTeX and depending packages. Just ranting at how we
>> handle the package doesn't help us, our users or the release process.
>
> There're at least three aspects: one is changing the attitude from "eh,
> whatever, we're not releasing for months anyway" to "argh, i hate bugs,
> kill, maim, destroy",
Do you imply that I have the first attitude, and why?
>> [1] and I have no indication that the RC bugs count had any influence on
>> the sarge delay between summer 04 and march 05.
>
> If you don't take the fairly linear drop from 400 to ~0 when we released as
> an indication it had an influence, I can't think of anything to say...
If you don't understand the frustration among DDs caused by the
month-long delay of the freeze caused by the nonexistence of testing
buildd infrastructure which wasn't used in the end, and everything
beeing communicated as being fixed "during the next weeks", I can't
think of anything to say.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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