Re: Auto-update for sid? Auto-backport?

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@debian.org>]

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 06:36:59PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Adrian Bunk writes ("Re: Auto-update for sid? Auto-backport?"):
> > Sometimes I see bug reports in the BTS where it is evident that a user 
> > has spent hours or days on debugging an issue and writing a marvelous 
> > bug report. I read the bug 10 years later with no other message ever
> > in the bug.
> > 
> > That's sad to read, and a disservice to our users.
> 
> It's sad, indeed.  But is it a disservice ?
> 
> We didn't _make_ the user spend their time debugging it.  They
> probably did that because the package was useful enough to them to
> warrant it.  That user is probably better off with the package, even
> in its unfortunate languishing state, than without it.
> 
> The same can go for other users, who probaby prefer a package in
> Debian that they may have to apply a patch from the BTS to, to no
> package at all.

Yes, in cases where a trivial patch is in the BTS.

But not in the cases where the package is broken beyond repair and
the bug documenting this in the BTS just happened to be non-RC.

And in general I'd expect from a maintainer that packages are maintained 
not worse than the QA-maintained orphaned packages - for the latter ones 
"easy" incoming bugs are usually handled properly.

> Ian.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed