Re: buildd/porter/maintainer roles again

[Peter Samuelson <peter@p12n.org>]

[Wouter Verhelst]
> Please remember that every time a package fails to function correctly
> on a particular architecture, barring toolchain bugs, this is a bug
> in that package itself.

"Barring toolchain bugs" is a pretty big caveat.  Just as big as
"barring kernel and libc issues", some other reasons for packages
to fail to build or run on particular architectures.

There is a perception, which may or may not be grounded in reality,
that _most_ FTBFS from the Debian buildds are either toolchain, kernel,
or libc issues.  It is certainly my perception.  And it seems to have
been a toolchain issue that started this thread (some mips buildd
simply cannot not build Java stuff, as I recall).

Do you, as a porter and buildd admin, have a rough idea what percentage
of FTBFS and arch-specific bugs you see that are ultimately a bug in
the package, versus an externality like a bad build chroot, bad kernel,
bad system library, or bad toolchain?  If we're talking about 90% vs.
10%, for example, that would inform who should really be on the front
line triaging this stuff.

Peter