Re: Proposed transition plan for non-free and call for help
On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 02:36:49PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> [-devel and -vote CCed. Please respect the Mail-Followup-To -project.
> You should really subscribe to -project, it's not that big. In any case,
> I will try read and reply to any comment]
Thanks Michael for taking the time to do this.
As you know, i am not really convinced that this is really a good thing
in the long run, but let's see what will happen.
> 2. The proposed implementation for non-free.org.
>
> Basically, there are two possibilities, a) using a GForge service and b)
> reproducing the debian.org services, but in a less complex way, where
> possible.
I would vote for b), since it would cause the less difference of use
over the current system.
> B. Reproducing the debian.org services. What is mostly needed are the
> Debian archive itself, the BTS, mailing-lists and the PTS.
>
> a) The archive. This has been taken care of already, as Daniel Stone's
> box already features a katie installation.
No mirror though, what about backups ? Not everyone has personal
backups, and i at least somewhat was relying on the archive to store the
packages, especially at times of limited disk space (like when trying to
build X :).
> b) The Bug Tracking System. Other projects (e.g. mutt) are using it,
> there is a package for it around, it should be rather easy to setup.
> The hard part would be to import the current bugs from non-free
> packages to the non-free.org BTS. One solution would be to copy the
> entire BTS and then removing archived bugs and the bugs for packages
> in main.
Like said, migration of bugs between non-free and debian would be
problematic, we can make do for now though, but i believe that this will
also be problematic for DD receiving eroned bug reports. I fear these
bug reports, or at least a proportion thereof may simply get lost if the
transition method is too involved. I don't know if this would be
significant though.
> c) The Package Tracking System. I talked to Raphael Hertzog about this
> a while ago. The code for the PTS is available and he told me that
> it should be possible to adopt it for something like non-free.org
> within an acceptable time frame. I'm not quite sure how hard it will
> be to transfer the current subscribers to non-free packages.
Still, no more single per maintainer page where both non-free, contrib
and main packages are visible, i guess :(
BTW, what about contrib ? Will it move to non-free or stay in debian ?
> One problem with the transition that has been identified is the
> reassignment of bugs from non-free packages back to main packages. The
> easy solution here would be to just open a new bug on the main package,
> with the full bug log from non-free.org attached. Maybe a better
> solution can be hashed out in the future, if this case proves to be
> quite common.
Ok. I don't think this is only a transition problem though, but will
also be felt later on.
> Another outstanding issue is the handling of the non-free.org keyring.
> We believe it should be kept synced with the debian keyring and other
> people should be added only after good consideration. Whether this
> amounts to a full-blown NM process will have to be seen.
Ok, but given this and other remark, i have some serious doubts how this
separate project could be seen as somthing other than related to the
debian project, and officially approved by it. I also again wonder if
the effort going into this would not be better spent in a more useful
way, but hey, if you can bring this trough, more power to you.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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