Re: RFC: Bug handling policy
On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:38:49 +0000
Berni Elbourn <berni@elbournb.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Andres Salomon wrote:
> >> 2. Severities
> >>
> >> Many submitters believe that their bug meets one of the following
> >> criteria for high severity. We interpret them as follows and will
> >> downgrade as appropriate:
> >>
> >> 'critical: makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole
> >> system) break...'
> >> The bug must make the kernel unbootable or unstable on common
> >> hardware or all systems that a specific flavour is supposed to
> >> support. There is no 'unrelated software' since everything
> >> depends on the kernel.
> >>
> >> 'grave: makes the package in question unusable or mostly so...'
> >> If the kernel is unusable, this already qualifies as critical.
> >>
> >> [Alternately: given that the user can normally reboot into an
> >> earlier kernel version, does that mean the bug is 'grave', not
> >> 'critical'?]
> >
> > No. Rebooting into an earlier kernel means that the user ends up
> > with known security holes. That should never be something that's
> > encouraged.
>
> May I comment here please. Reversion should be accommodated
> appropriately in this process. Production sites may have no option
> but to revert as a last resort...such bugs are critical and need tlc.
>
> The good news is the site is likely to cooperate with lots of follow
> up information after reverting simply because of the user visibility
> of the problem. Subsequent diagnosis of that information should allow
> the real bug and its severity to be established.
>
> Finally I want to say that it risks turning a site away from Debian
> forever if we just tell them they did wrong by reverting.
>
That's not what I'm saying. If they want to revert, that's fine; so
long as they understand the risks. It should not be acceptable for
*Debian* to say, "oh, just run the unsupported version for a few
months". And the way that I read Ben's comment, it sounded like a bug
should be less severe if users can be told to run an older
(unsupported) version. Ben, please correct me if I'm wrong.
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