Notice and explanation for three uploads of frozen packages

[Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>]

Hi,

        I have made three uploads of packages that are currently
 frozen, and here are the usual excuses.

 a) libselinux: The python-selinux package was mostly empty when run
    on buildd's since sometimes a timing problem when creating the
    source from .dsc makes make think that the swig output files are
    older than swig input files. Corrected by adding swig to build
    depends; no other code changes; and the swig output is only used
    by the optional package selinux-python.

   Please allow into testing; I think the risk is minimal, and this is
   a serious error (running a SELinux box is much harder without the
   helper python scripts).

 b) coreutils NMU: There were three assignments statements that I had
    failed to guard with an #ifdef WITH_SELINUX .. #endif. These are
    struct members which only exist when compiling with
    --with-selinux; and cause a FTBS failure on kfreebsd and the
    HURD. This is the only change.

   Please allow into testing; this is a cleaner patch, and should make
   no difference for Linux arches.

 c) kernel-package:  With recent versions of upstream kernels, Kbuild
    helpfully, and interactively, tries to fix kernel .configs if it
    deems them broken.  Tis could happen if you have an old .config,
    or you have a .config that contains questions inserted by patches
    not yet installed in the kernel source tree.

   The second factor is that a kernel version determination is getting
   more and more complex; all kinds of config options and files in the
   top dir may affect version numbers. Add to this the kernel-package
   feature that you may append arbitrary text to the EXTRAVERSION
   part, you have issues: it is hard to get the kernel version broken
   up ito component parts without using the Kbuild
   infrastructure. kernel-package accomplishes this by wrapping the
   top level Makefile in an outer Makefile that adds targets, and
   calling this outer Makefile  to echo the version comopnents.

   At this point, Kbuild helpfully tries to interactively configure
   the .config -- and aborts if it realizes that the call is being
   done in batch mode (no tty) 00 dumping garbage into STDOUT.

   So, when running make-kpkg --patches foo,bar ...; if your .config
   has stuff needed for the patches, the variable we were trying to
   set would have garbage, without the current patch.

        I am not yet asking for kernel-package to be included in
 testing, since I would like some field testing of my patches first.

        The first two packages are being uploaded with urgency hig;
 kernel-package is with urgency low.

        manoj
-- 
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty,
or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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