Bug#844264: release.debian.org: Please clarify "Packages must autobuild without failure"
On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 08:25:46PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 07:26:59PM +0100, Julien Cristau wrote:
> > The common rule is that FTBFS is serious. Then there's the real world,
> > where e.g. some tests are timing-dependent and so don't always fail, but
> > having them is still better than not, so if the failure rate is low
> > enough I think a lower severity can make sense.
>
> I think it would be better to use stretch-ignore for this,
> so that people do not take for granted that it's ok to fail
> randomly (to the point of not bothering to fix the problem).
A severity:important bug does not mean it's all "ok". It means it's
still a bug, but we can release with it. Autobuilders can build the
package given a sane number of tries, security uploads can be built
etc. If they can't due to an insane failure rate, the bug should be
'serious'. The decision between those is up to the maintainer and/or
the release team.
That's how I think things have worked for a long time (well, at least
as far as I can remember.)
That said, it seems to me that the biggest issue with sporadic failures
is that they hurt automated CI systems, which can't spot regressions as
well as they could if all packages built fine every time.
The vastly increased amount of automatic rebuilds and CI testing during
this release cycle (which is just awesome!) does suggest to me that it
might be good to make such bugs release critical for the next cycle. But
I think that's a discussion to be had after stretch is released.
(I am not a member of the release team.)
--
Niko Tyni ntyni@debian.org
Reply to: