Re: bacula_1.38.8-0.1_i386.changes is NEW
John Goerzen wrote:
> Hello Jose,
>
> Before I reply to your message, I want to be clear that I'm going to be
> blunt here, and say exactly what I think. This is not intended to be an
> insult or an attack, but the reasons for these concerns.
>
Ok. I don't like flamewars either. There are plenty on Debian-Devel.
> On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 07:42:17PM +0200, José Luis Tallón wrote:
>
>> I'd rather have you as a co-maintainer.
>> The unfortunate situation is that i have been in the NM queue for more
>> than two years and a half now. The fact that i depend on my sponsors to
>> get packages uploaded makes me delay them until i can guarantee a
>> minimum level of quality (since i can't fix my mistakes easily).
>>
>
> That situation sounds unfortunate; however, there are others that are
> able to successfully maintain packages in Debian -- with sponsors --
> that don't have this sort of problem. Or at least not to the extent
> that you have.
>
In fact, Stephen himself has offered to sponsor some of my upload, which
i have so far declined -- that's not a personal issue in any way, but
i'd rather save myself the trouble of explaining *once again* all my
technical decisions for a particular package.
Cristoph Haas is listed as uploader for Bacula.
Turbo Fredriksson helped quite a bit.
>> Moreover, i have had several personal issues during the last months,
>> which made me unable to help.
>>
>
> Unfortunate, but the proper thing to do in this situation is to announce
> the situation and solicit NMUs from people. As far as I have seen, you
> did not do this.
>
Hmm... I will keep that in mind for the next time, should it ever happen
(hopefully not)
But I can't see it anywhere in the Policy nor in the Developers' Reference.
> There are several reasons I have made the NMUs I have, and that I intend
> to take over this package. Some of them are:
>
> * Release-critical bugs that were open for over a year (303862)
> or a very long time (343762). Some of these were trivial (10-second)
> fixes.
>
Well... no upload = no bugfixes
> * Bacula was removed from testing three months ago due to its
> bugginess.
>
So what? that's obvious. Buggy package ==> removed from testing.
That is how we ensure our OS's quality.
> * Repeated promises from you in the BTS to make a new upload "soon",
> reference to beta testers, etc., but no upload was forthcoming.
> Your last upload was almost a year ago.
>
Yes. I am not proud of that.
> * Your in-progress 1.38 packages on SourceForge were a good start,
> but did not address many significant issues.
>
Well.. i did close most of the outstanding bugs, and adapted to a new
generation Bacula.
Transition from 1.36 to 1.38 was not that easy, since it involved a
delicate decision: splitting the sd in several "flavors".
> There are a lot of problems that have persisted for literally years in
> the Bacula packages. Some of them are:
>
> * Your postinst scripts would stop (and later restart) database
> servers without first asking permission. A terrible no-no in
> production environments.
>
Definitively, not MySQL not SQLite.
As for Postgres... well, i never claimed to be any good with postgres,
and adopted what was submitted. The RFH has been there, as you say, for
years.
BTW, the 0pre1 "Debian version" means something, and was advertised as such.
> * Your clean target was ineffective and caused a huge diff.gz
>
For 1.38 ? Yes. Can't clean before you have it built, right?
Those binaries were contributed by one of my users (Adam Thornton), when
the two machines i had available were unable to build Bacula-1.38.7.
I must say that i wasn't home at the time.
> * Bacula would link against Python 2.2 in some cases even though you
> dep'd on python2.3
>
Didn't get to it, either. Fortunately, your patches address that
problem, right?
> * Policy violations in numerous places, including treatment of logfiles
>
Touché as for the logfiles.
I would like to know what are the other Policy violations you refer to,
so that i can learn from those.
> * No rotation of logs
>
That's a wishlist bug. I think that 'wishlist' comes after 'grave' or
'important'. Do you think otherwise?
> * Indiscriminate removing of /var/lib/bacula on removal, which would
> completely break the remaining bacula packages on a system
>
Hmm.. never had that problem, but i understand your point.
Please note that i also use Bacula in production in several machines.
> * Bashisms in debian/rules.
>
Ok. Didn't notice those, nor did lintian or linda.
Care to point them so that i can learn?
> * Poor handling of multiple-variants problem. Hacking up configure
> scripts instead of just calling configure several times (see
> the reference to vim in the debian developers' guide)
>
Well.... I did build Bacula that way almost two years ago, with version
1.32f-4 till 1.32f-6.
I was publicly "reprehended" by Turbo Fredriksson due to the amount of
CPU wasted. He cared to contribute some patches which, after being
integrated and enhanced --as much as i could-- by me, form the current
build system.
His contribution meant a nearly 200% speed increase in the build
process... still disagree with that?
> * Lots of unused cruft in Debian source packages.
>
Well... apart from some remainings from an imperfect clean target, the
remaining contents of a Debian source package is up to that particular
package's maintainer, right?
> * Various binaries being installed to wrong package or to multiple
> packages.
>
I have already said "alpha", have I?
I didn't even have the opportunity to build the packages myself until
this weekend.
> As it was, the Bacula packages as they existed in sid were neither
> buildable nor installable.
Yes, due to the static linking.
I have already discussed that with Stephen Frost (Hello, Stephen) and
agreed that the only viable solution was to split the sd package too
(which hardly makes sense to new users)
> Your Bacula packages as posted on SourceForge were not installable.
Well.. i do have reports from Adam Thornton, Marco Visi and Mika
Marjamäki saying otherwise... maybe not the same flavor?
> Quite frankly, backup software is probably the single most critical
> software on my machine. I simply do not trust your Bacula packages to
> work correctly, do the right thing, and be useful in a disaster.
>
>
>> I am right now beta-testing the 1.38.8-1 / 1.38.9-1 packages with a team
>> of beta-testers.
>>
>
> I appreciate that you may have that. However, several things concern me
> about this:
>
> * All the problems I mentioned above. Most are glaringly obvious
> and should be fixed before sending it to "testers".
>
> * I have never seen who these testers are or what they are testing.
>
Adam Bonner
Benoit Mortier
Clemens Buchmann
Lucas Di Pentima
Warren Turkal
(Eli Anderson)
Emmanuel Decaen
James Harper
Sebastian Schmitzdorff
Mika Marjamäki
Anders Boström
... plus some people from the bacula-devel & bacula-users lists.
.. and they are testing my 1.38.8-1 packages (i.e. 1.38.8-0pre1 plus
your patches and a couple more things)
> * These claims are not credible anyway. For instance, in just one bug,
> 339322, you claimed:
> + On Nov. 15, 2005, that you're working on 1.38.0 packages
> + On Dec. 29, 2005, that you would release "something" by January 2,
> 2006.
> + On March 2 (AFTER bacula was removed from testing), you expected
> to have 1.38.5 by the weekend.
> As far as I can tell, nothing ever materialized from any of that
> (and certainly no upload to Debian). Your proposed 1.38.8-1 appears
> to do nothing but acknowledge the NMU, which to me makes it
> uninteresting and unimportant.
>
Ok. Can't say a thing about that.
You can think whatever you want, anyway. If my words don't convince you,
there's little else i can do.
>> I do also use it for work, though for such a big amount of data.
>> Again, i would prefer to co-maintain, if you don't mind. We could setup
>> a svn repository for maintenance and be done with it.
>>
>
> I actually already have it in darcs, and all the changes I have made
> so far are in darcs. I could publish that if you'd like.
>
Yes, please.
I don't consider myself the best maintainer ever, and so am willing to
learn.
>> ... and hopefully that would help convince my AM that i am readyto be an
>> "official" DD. I already maintain many more packages than lots of them,
>> and (until my personal situation got worse) with higher levels of
>> quality than those other maintainers (IMHO).
>>
>
> That is, of course, a call for Stephen to make.
Correct. But my regular sponsors and DD-friends also have their opinion
here, right?
> From a quick glance at your BTS page, I would have some concerns about your other packages as
> well -- such as #244169 "F*cked my root partition", over 2 years old.
> That one also demonstrated a lack of understanding of the purpose of the
> debian changelog, closing a bug with the comment "Will this work?"
>
I was reproved for that, by Steve Langasek himself some time ago.
I was also caught in the middle of a verbal battle between Hans Reiser
and Ed Boraas at the time.
The final decision was to keep the package with an RC bug to avoid it
migrating to testing.
I adopted the package because i felt that providing support for Reiserfs
in Parted would be good for our users. Unfortunately, libreiserfs is
neither supported nor maintained upstream, and will have to go away soon
(i.e. be removed)
Anyway, if this mail was supposed to not be a personal offense and
relate to Bacula, i can't see how this paragraph (and the following)
fit with that aim.
> In short, a lot of the quality issues come down to a "try and see if
> anybody complains" attitude, rather than writing things the right way to
> start with or testing them yourself -- and then not following up in a
> timely fashion when bugs are raised.
>
You have your right to interpret things that way.
I can't say much against that because the last 15 months have been the
worst in my life and i certainly didn't have the opportunity to care
about my packages as much as i would have liked.
However, Bacula didn't see a revision for over half of that period, so
this situation is not as
>> BTW, would you se so kind to sponsor my upload of Bacula_1.38.9-1 ?
>> I already have some fixes for reported bugs in the latest version
>> (distributed from my semi-private APT repo)
>>
>
> I looked, and found only a 1.38.8-1.
>
> I will be maintaining my own Bacula packages anyway, since I am
> concerned by numerous things in yours.
Ok. Debian is freedom. You are welcome to do NMUs, too... as far as you
post the patches, too.
(again, where are the patches for 1.38.9-0.1 ? )
> Given this, and the feedback of
> other Debian developers whom I have asked about this situation, plus the
> lack of response to my first message to you about the topic, I posted
> an intent to take over Bacula to debian-devel earlier today (before I
> got your latest response). You may find that message here:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/05/msg00260.html
>
Read. I'm sure you could do much better...
> I intend to follow through on that, and am already well on my way to
> rewriting the build system and fixing many additional bugs. I should
> add that I mis-placed the comment about you not being a DD; it is not a
> reason in itself for taking over the package and should be been listed
> separately.
>
Well.. if you don't trust me (you need not) ask Turbo and PMHahn about
the build system.
.. and you might as well want to coordinate with them if you are going
to hijack one of my most beloved packages, anyway.
> I do appreciate the effort you have put into Bacula over the years and
> am pleased that you are interested in participating with its development
> once again.
again? I'll pretend you didn't say that.
> Once I get Bacula's build system rewritten, to a more sane
> state, I would be glad to work on Bacula with you (or others) and would
> be happy to accept patches, with Darcs or otherwise.
>
Bacula's build system's "sanity" seems to be controversial.
My first packaging used the system you propose to use now... the new one
is around 200-300% faster (one build + three partial builds vs four
complete builds)
> I have no hard feelings towards you, and hope that you won't be angered
> by this.
Well... you message this morning was really offensive to me.
> It's nothing personal -- just an effort to improve the Bacula situation in Debian.
>
Then, continue doing NMUs (if it's not personal) and help me where you
see fit.
I have no problems listing you as an uploader and co-maintaining. I
already said that before and thanked you for your patches... both
privately and publicly.
> Thanks,
>
Thank me when the time has come that you are really thankful for
something I did. Until then, I can't trust your words (at least, not
more than you seem to trust my own)
(more on my non-DD status later)
J.L.
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