On 2019-08-02 07:48, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
I'm trying to mean what is meant by "truly critical functionality
problem" in Section 5.5.1 in the Debian Developer's Reference:
Extra care should be taken when uploading to stable. Basically, a
package should only be uploaded to stable if one of the following
happens:
* a truly critical functionality problem
* the package becomes uninstallable
* a released architecture lacks the package
Does this mean "release critical"?
I suspect that may have been what it was originally intended to mean. (I think the DevRef text dates from before my involvement in Debian.) It's not the yardstick that is currently applied, however. I need to find some tuits to write up some more useful "end-user" documentation for stable updates on release.d.o, but the closest currently is https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2018/04/msg00007.html
For example, #920767, which causes e4defrag to crash on 32-bit platforms. Relatively few people use e4defrag --- especially compared to e2fsck or mke2fs. So is a fix for something which is a second-tier aspect of e2fsprogs's functionality, and which only applies to 32-bit platforms, something which is "truly critical"?
Assuming that one agrees with the bug's "important" severity, and there is a targetted and "safe" fix, that certainly sounds like something that we would consider.
Regards, Adam