Re: Are release critical bugs fixed in sarge?
On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:05:12AM +0100, Johannes Wiedersich wrote:
> I have a question regarding the way bugs are dealt in debian stable.
>
> Will or should a package in sarge be updated, if it is unusable or has a
> serious bug, BEFORE etch becomes stable.
>
> Let's consider an example: say an editor programme has a bug and crashes
> regularly, loosing all text entered since the file was last saved
> manually. To my understanding that should classify as 'grave' and
> 'release critical', since data loss is occured. On the other hand, of
> course it may not be a security issue in the sense that it doesn't open
> doors to hackers or breaks the system.
>
The bug obviously made it through the entirety of the release cycle
without being considered release-critical :( If it is a bug in the
new Debian package myfavouriteeditor - and only 1% of Debian users use
myfavouriteeditor - then it's probably not sufficient to hold up the
entire release, but might be enough to cause someone not to release
myfavouriteeditor with this release of Debian but to wait.
> (I won't detail the annoyance caused by regular 'data loss' and having
> to explain a workaround to all our users, who 'have just been convinced'
> to switch from certain proprietary software to debian. I know there are
> worse bugs in that other software than just a crashing editor, but it
> happens that those are the kind of bugs people are used to...)
>
This sounds like a real bug on a real package. Details please - if the
workaround is trivial or just consists in telling people to save their
data, is that enough? Talk to the maintainer.
> Will and/or should such a bug be fixed in stable (before testing becomes
> stable)?
>
There are regular updates for Sarge to fix gross bugs and security
issues. Each package is hand considered by the release manager, who
operates to a set of criteria. So it could go into update 1 or 2
> Should such a bug be reported to security seperately?
>
Only if its a security bug - otherwise just send it to the maintainer
in the normal way via the bug tracking system.
> Thanks for improving my understanding!
>
> Johannes
>
> NB: Debians bug tracking system and its documentation on
> www.debian.org/Bugs are great, but I'm missing this kind of information.
>
>
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