Bug#612610: lintian: should suggest switching to 3.0 (quilt)
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:47:03PM +0200, Niels Thykier wrote:
> > Generally speaking, Debian needs a way to promote best practices,
> > because there *are* practices that are better than others and uniforming
> > on them is a way to both improve the quality of our maintenance work and
> > reduce barriers to contributions [...].
>
> I am inclined to agree on this.
Hi Niels, I think we're generally in agreement, so I'll just clarify one
of my main points here.
> Yes, that is part of it. For me, the second part of it is that Lintian
> is only effective as long as "everybody" keeps using it. In more
> detail, please see [1] (which I realise now was not mentioned in #702671).
The devil is in your quotes here :) The point here, I think, is that in
a project as large as Debian you will always find "somebody" that
disagrees with a specific "new" practice. Unfortunately that practice
might be beneficial for everyone else. In fact, this is the classical
reason why we generally insist on "rough consensus" as opposed to
"unanimity". So we do need a place where, at some point, we decide
"let's go for that" and we start using a tool (say, lintian) to nag
everyone about it, even if someone disagrees.
It's a difficult trade-off of course, as the potential to alienate
someone does exist. But while the consequences of that are constantly in
our minds, I think we also need to think a bit more at the project-wide
consequences of *not* doing that.
Thanks for your work, and reflections, on lintian!
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
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