Re: many packages fail to build twice in a row again
On 20/12/11 at 23:16 +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 09:36:47PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > On 20/12/11 at 22:01 +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > > With recent dpkg(-source) changes, many packages are again failing to
> > > build twice in a row, because of uncommitted upstream changes. Fixing
> > > this was a lenny release goal, maybe it should be one again?!? Most
> > > importantly, maybe someone who has access to one of those build grids
> > > can run the old tests again, because I feel by accidentally stumbling
> > > upon these problems we will not be able to find and fix many of them any
> > > time soon.
> >
> > Is it really worth it? There are many ways to work-around this, such as
> > using a temporary git repo to be able to 'git clean' and return to a
> > clean state before each build.
>
> If I'm fixing an RC bug, it's very convenient to be able to test a patch
> and then rebuild with a different patch if necessary. If the package
> doesn't build cleanly N times in a row, or if there are other problems
> with the packaging that make it difficult to fix, I usually go on to fix
> other bugs instead. Also, when I file a bug report, the harder you make
> it to fix your package, the less likely you are to receive a patch with
> that report, workaround or not.
I'm not saying that it's not convenient. But on the other hand, several
hundreds of packages probably need to be fixed, which will require a
large amount of manpower that could be used instead to fix problems
affecting our users.
Maybe it's better to fix those bugs when they are encountered, rather
than have a systematic effort to fix them all?
If you are interested into mass bug filing about issues that affect our
users, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2011/08/msg00091.html for a
list of 1073 packages failing to install, remove, or upgrade from
squeeze.
Lucas
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