Getting warned about and contributing to decisions (Re: Why is help so hard to find?)
Hi Chris,
Chris Carr wrote:
> Sorry to de-lurk with a tangential question, but how can I as an
> interested observer subscribe to the conversations where these decisions
> get made
Good question. Subscribe to the PTS for the affected packages[1] and
test the versions in unstable and experimental.
> and contribute views *before* things get to this stage?
If by "views" you mean "overlooked use cases or bugs", then filing
bug reports is very welcome. If by "views" you mean "telling
people what to do", the best way is to get involved in maintenance
(submitting patches, etc), so that the person to tell what to do is
yourself.
> I had the same frustrations as Mike and Roger with insserv
FWIW moving to LSB-style dependency-based boot (abbrev. "insserv") is
an interesting example. It is a big change. As mentioned in this
thread, there is a detail still to iron out: what exactly should be
done with stray init scripts without the LSB header?[2]
"Why do some developers like it, then?" you might wonder. It removes
a huge source of maintenance headache --- the global allocation of
boot sequence numbers[3].
If a year and four months ago someone volunteered to take on that
burden (i.e., take responsibility for making sure the number-based
boot order still works, patching affected packages where appropriate)
for squeeze, then insserv could have been made optional. I am not
aware of anyone stepping up to do that.
> a deeply
> flawed "upgrade" broke several of my systems and the maintainers'
> response was basically "too bad" (GRUB2).
You filed a bug against the grub-pc package and the response was "too
bad" rather than "here's how we can fix it"? What is the bug number?
> On a completely separate note, where is the correct place to advertise
> for a new sponsor?
See http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq#HowdoIgetasponsorformypackage.3F
Hope that helps,
Jonathan
[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/resources.html#pkg-tracking-system
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/598020
Maybe insserv can query dpkg itself for init scripts from packages in
the conffiles state. Or maybe the release notes can provide detailed
instructions for getting past this hurdle.
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts/DependencyBasedBoot
Reply to: