Bugs in Backported Packages [Was: Re: Backports service becoming official]
On Tue, 07 Sep 2010, Steve Langasek wrote:
> But when someone takes my package and uploads it somewhere other
> than the main Debian archive, they incur *all* the responsibilities
> of maintaining that package, including the responsibility of
> appropriately triaging bug reports and forwarding them to the
> maintainer when relevant. You don't get to decide that I should
> spend my limited Debian time triaging bugs for someone else's
> version of my package.
There are separate aspects to bugs in backported packages.
A. Where the bug exists:
1) Main version only
2) Backported version only
3) Both
B. Where the bug is filed
1) Main version
2) Backported version
The main maintainer cares about A.1 & A.3, but (optionally?) not A.2;
the backported maintainer cares about A.2 & A.3, but probably not 1.
Currently, the BTS does not correctly handle backport branches (we
also don't properly handle -p-u or security).
Ideally, it would be possible to have bugs filed against the BTS, with
the assumption that if a bug was filed only against a backport version
(B.2), it was the backported version maintainer's responsibility to
deal with the bug, and fix the versions as appropriate if it actually
affects the main version of the package.
If the bug only affects the backport, then it should have a special
tag set (backport), and maintainers who didn't want to know about the
backport branch could filter out bug mail (and bugs) which had that
tag set.
An alternative solution is to just have reportbug mail the backport
bug reporting mailing list, and have people bounce messages as
appropriate to the BTS.
Don Armstrong
--
We were at a chinese resturant.
He was yelling at the waitress because there was a typo in his fortune
cookie.
-- hugh http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000321.html
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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