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Re: new release process (package pool) being proposed



On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 07:37:55AM -0700, Robert Jones wrote:
> Quoth Anthony Towns on 25 Oct, 1999:

(Saith?)

> [ Disclaimer:  I am not a Debian developer yet, due to the new-maintainer

*sigh*

> > First, proposals without code are pointless. They're fun and all to
> > discuss and such, but they don't get results.
> There is some code that has been offered for a similar proposal now.  And your
> yourself offered it. :)  Besides, this is such a far-reaching policy decision
> (effective changing the entire way Debian is versioned and released), I would
> be disturbed to see code put into place without some planning done beforehand.

The proper order is: thought, prototype, discussion/vote, implementation.

Without a prototype, we shouldn't be voting. Throwing out ideas,
is fine, we've alreay done a lot of that, even before Lalo said
anything. Personally, I was finally getting around to trying to make
a prototype.

> > Third, voting on `this is what these people will spend their time on in
> > future' is completely inappropriate. If it's really a better way, they'll
> > spend their time on it because they want to. If it's a bit ambiguous,
> > you can spend your time on it if you want to.
> As I said, I am relatively new to the Debian project, and I'm not yet a
> maintainer, but it strikes me that if we follow this line of thinking, there
> is no need for any directing body.

Which is a good thing.

> If everyone did what they wanted to, or
> didn't do it at all, there would be absolutely no reason for this discussion,
> or developer voting

There's definitely a need for some actual `do we actually want to go ahead
and implement this' discussion, which might need to be a vote even, but only
/after/ we've got a working implementation.

All this `I've got a proposal, let's vote on it' stuff isn't quite right.
We didn't vote on debconf, we discussed it, then implemented it. Compare
and contrast with the data/ section: we discussed it, voted (via -policy),
and... nothing.

See http://www.debian.org/~ajt/ for the last version of `look, I made a
proposal! Now all the hard work's done, let's just do it'. It didn't work
either.

Cheers,
aj

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

 ``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it 
        results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
                                        -- Linus Torvalds

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