Re: Testing migration doesn't check build-depends?

[Filipus Klutiero <chealer@gmail.com>]

Le May 11, 2008 01:18:07 pm Andreas Barth, vous avez écrit :
> * Luk Claes (luk@debian.org) [080511 19:09]:
> > Adeodato Simó wrote:
> > > * Steve Langasek [Sat, 10 May 2008 23:03:25 -0700]:
> > >> That wouldn't be a good idea unless we first get support for keeping
> > >> old library packages around in testing to allow asynchronous
> > >> transitions. Otherwise, testing transitions would become far more
> > >> brittle than they currently are.
> > >
> > > Oh, point. But I don't think there were plans to make the current
> > > britney support build-depends, and britney2 *already* supports keeping
> > > old library packages around.
> >
> > I don't understand why dependency checking plus build dependency
> > checking would need support for keeping old library packages while
> > dependency checking without build dependency checking doesn't need it?
>
> Eh, it's so:
>
> A transition are a couple of packages (up to a few hundered sometimes)
> that are glued together and can only go to testing at the same point in
> time. Issue with that is that all of them need to be ready at one
> britney run.
>
> Now, there are proposals that reduce the glue possibilities (or: making
> the glue clowds smaller), and there are some that increase the glue
> possibilities. One can also use another word for that: Some make testing
> migrations easier, some make them harder.
If that's all what Steve meant, I'm not convinced that checking build-deps 
would make testing transitions "far more brittle". I *guess* it would make 
transitions at worst 20% harder.

> In Steves and my opinion, there are already enough (or even: too many)
> large transitions which are already hard enough, so we want to avoid
> changes making migrations harder unless there are (at least) the same
> amount of easier things in place compared to now.
>
>
> Making it easier:
> - keeping old versions around
> - autohinter
>
> Making it harder:
> - build deps

IMHO transitions are going fairly well currently. Symbols files support in 
dpkg-shlibdeps made it easier and will continue to make it easier. Also, in 
the "making it less harder", there could be a new hint to ignore build deps, 
say "ignore debhelper" if it's known that debhelper will have to be updated 
before releasing anyway. With such a hint (and maybe even without), I think 
that checking build-deps is a good idea even without any of the "making it 
easier".