tag 802501 + wontfix user debian-policy@packages.debian.org usertag 802501 = normative stalled thanks Hello, In #904558 I asked the T.C. for advice about how to move #802501 forward. Their ultimate response was to recommend that a working group of developers come up with some method, other than exiting nonzero, for a maintscript to indicate that it failed to restart services. Let me take this opportunity to thank all those who were involved in #904558. In this message, I seek to explain my understanding of what the closing of T.C. bug #904558 means for debian-policy bug #802501, and those merged with it. Apologies for the length. I wanted this general sort of reasoning to be recorded somewhere for reference in future discussions. ~ ~ ~ When the Policy Changes Process fails to establish consensus, we have a few options. If we think that consensus hasn't been established only because no-one has volunteered to come up with an adequately detailed response to the problem uncovered by the filing and discussion of the bug, and the bug has been open for a while with no evidence of anyone working on it, we (the Policy Editors) will often just close the bug. We don't want such things to stick around, clogging up the list of open issues in a way that's demotivating. This is the 'obsolete' usertag. If we think that consensus hasn't been established because there are good arguments on all sides, but we (the Policy Editors) additionally think that argument to determine the very best solution is less important right now than settling on one of the possible solutions rather than remaining in further discussion, then we can refer the bug to the T.C. to make a call between the competing options. This was, I think, the intended purpose of the 'ctte' usertag, but we haven't been using it. Finally, if we don't want to refer the bug to the T.C. -- generally because it's not important enough -- but we think that closing the bug would be counterproductive because someone else will just open a new bug raising the same issue again at some near point in time, we can just leave the bug open, as a kind of placeholder to hopefully reduce the number of duplicate bugs filed. I just added a 'stalled' usertag for this case. The 'obsolete', 'ctte' and 'stalled' usertags are meant to be used in addition to the 'wontfix' tag. ~ ~ ~ In #904558, I did not ask the T.C. to rule on what maintscripts should do when they fail to restart a service. Rather, I asked them to weigh in on the decision between the options described above, given that the Policy Changes Process had failed to achieve consensus. However, in the message closing #904558, the T.C. indicated that they declined to issue a ruling about what maintscripts should do when they fail to restart a service. So the second option described above, corresponding to the 'ctte' usertag, has been taken off the table. That leaves us with the question of whether to leave #802501 open, in the absence of the possibility of closing it by having the T.C. make a call. Given that this bug has already been filed (at least) twice, I think it would be best for us to leave it open. So I'm tagging wontfix+stalled. ~ ~ ~ In filing #904558, I made an alternative suggestion to the above: > As a Policy delegate I want to move this issue along, and I can see > three ways of doing that: > > 1. write a patch to explicitly state in Policy that what happens when a > service (re)start fails in a maintscript is left up to package > maintainer discretion, and close the bugs > [...] I no longer think this would be useful enough to have in Policy, but I'd like to hear from anyone who disagrees. -- Sean Whitton
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