Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch

[Roland Stigge <stigge@antcom.de>]

Hi,

thanks for the update.

Steve Langasek wrote:
> NMU policy
> ~~~~~~~~~~
> After lots of experimentation with NMU policies during the sarge release
> process, it's pretty clear that permissive NMU policies had a HUGE,
> positive impact on our ability as a project to cope with outstanding
> release-critical issues.  We don't want that to stop now just because
> the sarge release is behind us; NMUs don't just speed up the release,
> they're also great for helping the quality of Debian!  For this reason,
> we would like to continue the 0-day NMU policy from sarge throughout the
> etch release cycle.  But first, we'd like to hear from you, the
> developers, about what *you* thought did and didn't work with NMUs for
> sarge.

0-day NMUs are fine, as long as it is emphasized that it's only
appropriate if the usual maintainer doesn't work on the issue. I.e. you
either need to try to contact the developer or only operate on
reasonably "old" bugs; better both.

Otherwise things like

    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=308406

will happen more often, and I expect even more stupid things. As seen in
this example, we also need to stress that NMUs must be done with special
care and responsibility. And the NMUer needs to be sufficiently skilled
to work on packages otherwise unknown to him.

Thanks.

bye,
  Roland