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Re: [PROPOSAL] Origin and Bugs support



On Sun, Nov 26, 2000 at 05:45:10PM -0700, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 26 Nov 2000, Ben Collins wrote:
> 
> > Then what if someone installs a Debian package on your distribution? How
> > does that get handled? What if someone wants to integrate a set of
> > packages from another source (not a distribution) with Debian or Progeny
> > (can we say helix)?
> 
> Well clearly Helix et al are what this proposal should be addressing.
> Making things simpler for Progeny/etc would just be a nice off shoot.

Right, which is to say that this isn't a bad proposal just because it's
bad, but because it just doesn't address one issue.

> > IMO, Progeny should only get bug reports for packages that they
> > intentionally changed. Further more, I don't think distributions should
> > take over Debian's job. Progeny and other offshoots exist on top of
> 
> I think this is not wise. I can think of lots of reasons, but how about
> this.
> 
> Many Progeny users files a bug on APT asking that it support clusters
> better. I having no interest in that stuff so I drop it on a shelf for all
> eternity. 

But that's very argumentative, and asks that the bug tools know the
interests of each and every packages maintainers, authors and
distributors. I don't think that is in the realm of the bug tracking
tools, or bug tracking policy.

> Progeny was robbed of valuable feedback and it didn't really help
> anything.. Be creative, feedback is a valuable commercial commodity. 

But what if we are interested in it? What if the Debian package
maintainers is already working on such a feature?

> I think all Debian derived dists include a bug tool that sends them bugs -
> so why are we trying to force them not to do this??
> 
> Not to mention the fact that most of what we do is integration - those
> kins of bugs have to go to the people doing the integration (which
> isn't us)

Uh, integration bugs could be a Debian problem. It could be that a new
Debian library upload made changes that were binary incompatible, and
quite broken. We don't know what might happen, but things can be Debian's
fault, and we don't want to miss those.

> > As much as we trust Progeny, because of it's roots and it's employees, we
> > don't want to start a precedent where an offshoot distribution can horde
> 
> Er, they can't really - GPL and all.
> 
> Besides that they already have a reason to send changes upstream and to
> us - managing an ever increasing number of custom patches is expensive.

Heh, without saying too much, commercial entities working with GPL
software does not mean that they will turn in bug reports and fixes
upstream, nor does it mean they mind working with custom patches. This is
all in my experience with several packages. No offense nor implications
meant for Progent of course.

Anyway, the real solution to this is not "if they have dist 'foo' all bugs
go to them". The better solution for what Progeny wants is for there to be
a global Origin for a particular "Release". Apt does know about releases,
so maybe Apt can offer up something in it's cache that reportbug can query.

Then Progeny wont have to touch all of the packages in their dist. Also,
reportbug could then check dependencies to see if there is a mix match of
Origins and offer some sort of choice, or multiple reports to the related
Origins.

-- 
 -----------=======-=-======-=========-----------=====------------=-=------
/  Ben Collins  --  ...on that fantastic voyage...  --  Debian GNU/Linux   \
`  bcollins@debian.org  --  bcollins@openldap.org  --  bcollins@linux.com  '
 `---=========------=======-------------=-=-----=-===-======-------=--=---'



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