On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 08:38:15AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: > > I'm not asserting that this problem is *not* significant, I simply don't > > know - and am interested in knowing if anyone has more data on this beyond > > some four-year-old anecdotes. Certainly, Debian with its wider range of > > ports is more likely to run into problems because of this than Ubuntu, and > > so will need to be fairly cautious. > I don't think the number of ports will have any meaning here. If the > package is too broken to build/work on the maintainers architecture it > will most likely be broken on all archs. On the other hand if it works > on the maintainers architecture then testing or no testing makes no > difference to the other ports. > It seems to me the only port that MIGHT suffer quality issues is the > one the maintainer uses. Meaning i386 or amd64 usualy and Ubuntu > already has experience there. On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:24:42PM +1100, Robert Collins wrote: > On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 19:29 -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: > > I'm not asserting that this problem is *not* significant, I simply don't > > know - and am interested in knowing if anyone has more data on this beyond > > some four-year-old anecdotes. Certainly, Debian with its wider range of > > ports is more likely to run into problems because of this than Ubuntu, and > > so will need to be fairly cautious. > I'd have assumed that ports will have no effect on this: Debian only > uploads one binary arch (from the maintainer) anyway :- only builds on > that arch will be directly affected except in the case of a build > failure that the maintainer could have caught locally. I thought the nature of the problem was clear, but to be explicit: requiring binary uploads ensures that the package has been build-tested *somewhere* prior to upload, and avoids clogging up the buildds with preventable failures (some of which will happen only at the end of the build, which may tie up the buildd for quite a long time). The larger number of ports compared to Ubuntu has the effect that the ports with the lowest capacity are /more likely/ to run into problems as a result of such waste, and as Debian only advances as fast as the slowest supported port, this holds up the entire distribution. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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