Re: Bits from the FTPMaster meeting
On Wed, Nov 18 2009, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 12:42:47AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava a écrit :
>>
>> I beg to differ. This sounds like a maintainer that is not
>> providing the support for their package, and needs to orphan that
>> package; not building on some architecture is often a symptom of
>> problems elsewhere as well. I am not sure we ought to support
>> maintainers that are neglectful of their packages.
>
> You are member of the technical comittee, which means that I should
> trust your experience. I want you and this list to understand that I
> take your advice to orphan my packages very seriously.
While I am flattered, I don't think you should pay special
attention to my words based on who I am. That is the flip side of
arguing to the man; arguing by authority. You should pay attention to
my argument only if it makes sense.
> For the programs I am interested in, I do not share Debian's goal to
> make them run on all existing platforms we support.
I don't think that that is the rationale for making packages
build everywhere; if it were, we would not have P-a-s. The rationale is
that making packages portable unmasks bugs that are present everywhere,
but not yet triggered,
Now, there are of course packages that do not make sense to
build on all architectures, or to not build on specific arches. My
SELinux related packages are an example -- they do not make sense to
have on the kfreebsd or the HURD. Which is why we have mechanisms to
exclude packages from architectures -- and by default, if a package has
never built on an architecture, it is not a testing migration blocker.
The answer is to utilize these exception mechanisms.
> Trust me, it is not only to save my time, but also because I do not
> want my packages to be a burden to the communauty. It is my experience
> that for bioinformatics packages, when a bug is found by the buildd
> network on an unsupported architecture, neither upstream nor the
> porters show much interest for it. I do not mean this as a criticism,
> since I share this point of view that there is better to do than
> fixing those bugs.
Right. But it is not for upstream or the porters alone: this is
what we, as Debian developers, do. We are not just glorified
packagers; we are supposed to be "Developers", we take an active role
in improving and fixing our packages. Anything less does not do justice
to the project's goal of creating the "BEst" OS ever.
> I am of course pleased to see my work re-used, but I would be even
> more pleased if people would use Debian Med. To attract more users, we
> need a good release and good medical packages. I do think that not
> speding time on porting some of our bioinformatics packages would help
> the two sides of the coin.
Firstly, if it requires that much porting, it might point to a
defect in design, which should be fixed. Secondly, if there is a
legitimate reason (and of course there are legitimate reasons to not
build stuff on some arches) -- then talk to your fellow Debian
developers, and get an entry added to the P-a-s. It is not hard.
manoj
--
"...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero
outside" (By Linus Torvalds)
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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