Re: stable boot-floppies maint (was Re: M68K boot floppies / CDs)
> > The users, on the other hand, often need CD images and mostly use stable.
> > At this time, though, there just are not enough maintainers to properly
> > support stable. And getting updates to the boot-floppies rejected because
> > they are not security related neither helps the users nor improves my
> > motivation to invest further work into an apparently futile effort that
> > I'm not over likely to benefit from.
>
> I don't know who said this. I have been told by Richard Braakman that
> fixes and feature changes of any sort which make instalation easier
> and better can be allowed into stable system.
The April 1999 boot-floppies update was rejected because it's not security
relevant (I have no longer access to my mailbox from that time, but it
might be in one of the list archives). Christian Steigies will have
further details on that because it was his new Amiga kernel that was the
main reason for the update.
On the recent reject - I got a message on Jan. 1 stating that my upload
from Dec. 13 or Dec. 14 (which was for r4) was _installed_ but a look at
the contents of the archive revealed that it had been installed only
partially. See my bug #53967 (no subject, I keep messing up in mysterious
ways with the BTS somehow) against ftp.debian.org.
When discussing the implications of this, Richard said that fixing this
now in the archive was impossible without a new changelog (I probably
mistook this to mean 'a new m68k boot-floppies changelog, please
re-upload') and advancing to 2.1r5. Maybe I'm reading too much into that,
but releasing r5 just for m68k when no CD images have been done for m68k
yet seems like a lot of hassle. If this is necessary, I'd suggest to
change the archive and leave some time for one of the m68k people to build
a CD and test it (Phil offered to give me an account for that).
> I believe it's critical to allow us to continue to improve
> boot-floppies for a stable platform even after stable has been
> released. It's critical because if users don't have any easy time
> completing the installation system, the Debian loses big time.
I can only agree. Unfortunately, not all problems that happened with the
slink boot floppies can be fixed (no slink system to build on, no Mac to
do the Mac specific changes, no time to work on it for my part). We'd need
a way of optimizing the net result given the limited resources on all
sides. I have no good idea how that would be possible at this time.
> On a personal note, I'd like to confirm that when Michael was the
> active m68k porter, it was very very easy and constructive working
Thanks for the kudos :-) Let me add that communication with the
boot-floppies team through Adam and Enrique was very effective while I was
enjoying enough spare time to do the m68k boot-floppies. Unfortunately,
this (the spare time, of course) has changed for me since.
Michael
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