Re: security updates introducing breakage

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Stefan Fritsch writes ("Re: security updates introducing breakage"):
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > An alternative would be to look for bugs which are "fixed" in the
> > previous version but "found" in the update, and ask submitters of
> > regressions to mark the bug as "fixed" in the previous working
> > version.
> 
> This probably also amounts to reportbug asking if the bug is a regression 
> and then marking the bug as such. If this can be done without the 
> submitter having to know about the BTS's version tracking, this would be 
> ok, too.

I guess reportbug could ask you
  "Do you know whether this ever worked properly on this computer?
   If so, when is the last time you are sure it worked?"
and then use the packaging system logs to find the version number of
the package at that point in time.

If the quality of this data from submitters was any good it might well
help the maintainers in general as the maintainer would get to know
"probably introduced between X and Y".

Ian.