Re: Updated proposal for improving the FTP NEW process

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

Scott Kitterman writes ("Re: Updated  proposal for improving the FTP NEW process"):
> If you consider it absurd to not increment the revision due to
> changes that never made it in the archive, then I don't know where
> it stops.

IMO Debian's rules should require that the revision should be
incremented (at least) when you have shared the previous revision with
other people as part of your Debian work.  That includes people who
are processing NEW, sponsors, etc.

I hope the reasons why this is a sensible place to stop are obvious.

If you want to increment the revision for every git commit then as far
as I'm concerned that's between you and your computer :-).  (There are
sometimes good reasons for doing so when you are building binaries...)

>  I admit, this was hyperbole, but Ian's extremism annoys
> me.  I should do a better job of ignoring it.

I'm sorry to post messages that you feel like you should be ignoring.
Thanks for arguing back anyway.

> I'm not sure you actually read what I wrote since I wrote that I
> thought REQUIRING the revision to be bumped was a bad idea and you
> gave me a case where it made sense to do so.  Nowhere in this thread
> have I ever said bumping the revision is inherently a bad idea.

I am indeed suggesting that there should be a requirement.

Ultimately the purpose of the version number is so that we can
distinguish packages with the same name and different contents.  These
distinctions need to be made on users' systems and also in the proper
archive suites, but they also need to be made in NEW and in the
sponsorship queue, and when sharing informally.

Once source packages are being thrown about (in NEW, in sponsorship,
etc.), having different packages which are apparently identical (same
filenames, same metadata) is unreasonably confusing.  It requires the
people who deal with them to invent ad-hoc overlay versioning schemes.

This is all very silly[1] IMO, when we could use the existing version
number field to identify the version of the package.

AFAICT the only reasons people don't bump the revision when they
re-upload to NEW are:

 * Some of our upload tools DTWT by default if you bump the version
   number and/or add changelog stanzas, for versions that didn't make
   it to the archive suite in question.  This is IMO a tooling
   problem.  (You could use my tool and not suffer this problem; or
   you could improve the other tools.)

 * Some people have a misplaced sense that not using -1 or whatever is
   "untidy".  It's true that it does leave visible traces, but those
   visible traces are the record of what really happened.  Depending
   on exactly what happened, they can be useful in the future.  They
   are certainly not harmful.  This relates to my general refrain that
   integers are cheap and we should not be afraid to "waste" a few.

I hope you find this message more to your taste.  [1] despite my use
of the word "silly".

Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
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