Re: kde 5.7

[Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de>]

Am Samstag, 9. Juli 2016, 00:33:15 CEST schrieb Diederik de Haas:
> On vrijdag 8 juli 2016 18:01:31 CEST Hillel Lubman wrote:
> > The way I see it, improvement can be achieved by providing some relation
> > between packages. I.e. making sure they enter testing all at once, and if
> > one is stuck, other related ones wouldn't enter. This would ensure that
> > frameworks all enter at once, and users of testing would be able to
> > continue rolling the rest of their system, even if frameworks are stalled.
> > 
> > Do you think it's a feasible solution, or it doens't fit into Debian
> > methodology? Or you think frameworks shouldn't be seen as one related set
> > of packages?
> 
> _I_ think it's useful feedback (fwiw).
> The way I currently see/understand them is this:
> It was unforeseen that the mixture of 5.22 and 5.23 of framework packages
> would cause issues and that is actually not 100% certain, but it very much
> looks like the solution as getting those in (version) sync seemed to have
> solved the issues every time.
> 
> Debian has a 'feature' for coordinated transitions, namely https://
> release.debian.org/transitions/ but as can be read in the linked
> documentation (https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ReleaseTeam/Transitions) the
> frameworks packages actually shouldn't qualify for that feature as there is
> no ABI/API change (normally) between framework packages versions.
> I may not fully understand this feature myself though.

Diederik, I think this is about "I want an always stable and releaseable 
testing" again.

And, yes, while I think some improvements in the order packages enter testing, 
would certainly be nice, I also think that the main purpose of testing is just 
that: Preparing Debian for release by testing the heck out of it. That it is 
kind of a rolling distro, is in my eyes just a side effect of it. And I think 
for a rolling distro unstable is more suitable anyway.

So that is where I will focus my energy: Testing out the new packages while 
fully understanding that there can be transitional states of breakage that do 
not even matter for the final stable distribution as it won´t have KF 5.22 
packages.

If you want to put energy into changing the order in which packages enter 
testing, fine, go ahead, I am sure many users will appreciate it:

I just suggest to think clearly then what steps actually help you to move 
towards this goal. And which steps do not and as such as mainly a waste of 
energy. I think a discussion here is such a waste of energy, cause, see, we 
had this discussion before. I took hours to write mails explaining things, 
while in the end its the Debian developers and the admins of the build 
machines are the ones who effectively can change things around testing. But 
they didn´t take part in this discussion.

Thus I stand by it: Any discussion here *without* involving the members of the 
Qt/KDE team and the people who put in a lot effort to maintain the build 
mechanisms for Debian is not helping to improve things *at all*. Unless 
probably you work on coming up with a concept that could work for them, but 
even then, as its them doing the actual work, you better come up with 
something, they agree with.


I am accepting Sid/Testing for what it (currently) is and am willing to deal 
with temporary breakage. Cause I think for stabilising KDE´s Plasma and 
Applications this is more important than to try to fix temporary instabilities 
as side-effects of the development and package building process.


That written I am training to let this discussion be to itself now. If need be 
I will do a summer break from debian-kde mailing list. Cause I found myself to 
be quite touchy on this, easily offended and maybe overly engaged.

Cause in the end: *My* Plasma/Qt desktop is stable since weeks, I do not have 
any major issues with it at all, and it is important to me to focus on where I 
can really help while also clearly deciding how much energy I want to spend on 
this work.

Honestly to all testing users my current recommendation at this exact point in 
time would be this: Switch to unstable, dist-upgrade and then switch back to 
testing again – or remain with unstable, but I think its also important that 
some users continue test testing. Of course, if you want to wait till Plasma 
5.7 in unstable is complete, then wait.


Of course, how you decide to spend your energy, by all means, is your 
decision. So in case you want to focus on minimising temporary instabilities 
in testing, by all means go for it. Good luck with that.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin