On Tue, Jun 03, 2008 at 04:42:22PM +0000, Joey Hess wrote:
> Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> > No, tasks are not our concern directly, as it lists many packages that
> > any user can live without, without being hurt or even impeded. The sole
> > thing that matters is the priority, but packages with high priorities
> > are hardly leaves packages as a general rule.
>
> Tasksel is designed to continue working if not all packages in a task
> are available, but at the same time most tasks have certian Key packages
> which, if unavailable, will prevent the task from being used at all. The
> idea is that, without those packages, the task cannot be performed at
> all.
>
> Most of these are low priority, and some (starred below) are leaf packages.
> The release team should be aware of this, and should try to avoid killing
> tasks by removing them unnecessarily, and should probably communicate to the
> tasksel maintainers if it does need to remove them.
>
> [...]
> *lv
> [...]
> *xfce4
> [...]
>
> Beyond tasksel, your criteria that low priority leaf packages can be removed
> at any time is flawed. Another example is that d-i apt-installs a variety of
> low priority leaf packages. I don't have a complete list of those.
Well in your list, there are several intersting examples. lv for
example, has many replacements. That may not have all the features of
lv, but that are a decent replacement. Moreover lv isn't _that_ known,
and if this task doesn't install lv, noone will be hurt. OTOH of course,
we won't remove xfce4.
In my view, the release team is here to be sure the release meets a
handful of critera (non exhaustive list) being:
* taking care of explicit release goals ;
* taking care of having no RC bugs ;
* taking care of non-explicit release goals.
THe later are goals that we all pursue that are not written because
self-evident like:
* having a working gnome/kde/xfce4, or having a recent enough
iceweasel, or or or...
* having a recent toolchain
* having a recent kernel ...
Usually those non explicit goals depends upon meta-packages like
kde-core/kde/gnome/xfce4/... And we trust maintainers of those
meta-packages to provide dependencies on the really hot stuff. And yes
you can have huge meta-package for the less used stuff. Kde used to (and
probably still have) 3 layers of meta packages: kde-core (what you
absolutely need for a small KDE), kde (for the official "KDE" branded
stuff), kde-extra or sth similar, for the third party stuff.
I'd like to recall that all the noise started from the fact that I
removed update-notifier and friends from testing. Those packages are
hardly needed for having a great Debian Gnome experience. I'd like to
point out that:
* update-* were leaf packages, and weren't depends from a meta
package;
* both Loic and Josselin agree that those packages are not in a shape
satisfactory for release, especially since it's full of ubuntuisms
and that it lacks many of its useful features because of that. To
cite an example Loic told me, update-* decide that an update is a
security one because the distribution name ends with -security,
which is a *unbuntu* thing, and won't work for Debian. Given that
the goals of the applet is to urge end users to apply security
updates when it happens, well, in Debian, it totally misses the
point.
What happens for real, is that Raphaël made a lot of noise about a
package he really cares about, and he saw disappear from testing (and in
fact he didn't really saw it, he saw someone else talk about it). I've
seen packages I care about disappear from testing (or even from Debian
altogether), or simple be unmaintained in the past. I've usually instead
of crying, adopted them or fixed them in NMUs, or done QA uploads. You
can see in that list in no specific order: lighttpd (now in the team),
xinetd (hijacked an ITA that saw no change for 3 monts), libsrs2 (was
removed from Debian, re-uploaded and adopted), ion3-scripts (was
candidate for removal, I NMUed it), ... I just wish Raphaël would have
made the same *without* the noise. Such things happen in Debian every
day, and are normal.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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