Re: Delinquent maintainers?
On (12/08/06 23:07), Carl Fink wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 03:40:07AM +0100, James Westby wrote:
> > If so I have sympathy for you, but it is possible to get it by other
> > means, and the bug that is keeping it out of etch means that it shouldn't
> > be in Debian at all in it's current state.
>
> Okay, but the bug can be fixed, if the maintainer would do something, or so
> I understand. Saying "It's a bad bug" doesn't really mean much in that
> context.
It also requires the movement of upstream as well to clarify the
licenses, and include them with the files that aren't mentioned.
I am saying "It's a bad bug," but I really mean that it is a very
serious bug that means vlc is *undistributable*, and that Debian is
currently doing something wrong i distributing it at all. (Note however
that I am not an expert on these matters, and so I might be wrong).
The bug report is excellent and spells out the problem in detail. There
is no technical knowledge required to fix this bug if you wnated to help
do something about it. My suggestion would be to get the source of the
package, and go through it and write a proper debian/copyright file as
best you can (the bug report and
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/03/msg00023.html
might help here).
You can then email the bug report attaching your work, and enquire
whether the maintainer has contacted upstream about the other part of
the problem. If not you could offer to do that for him. (Note I am using
you in a more general sense, i.e. "one could offer...").
> So they just sit unfixed and unremoved forever?
The maintainer can close them, but wont until he is sure they that are
not a bug. He could also downgrade them if he feels that they do not
meet the requirements of an RC bug anymore.
You could ask him whether he wishes to do this, but he only tagged them
unreproducible quite recently.
> It isn't that I'm suffering from it in the sense that it affects me, since I
> CAN'T EVEN INSTALL THE STUPID PROGRAM. It's that the presence of those two
> unreproducible-but-unremoved bugs keeps checkinstall out of Etch. Forever,
> apparently.
You realise this is a safety mechanism? There would be complaints if
Debian put in a stable release a program that when used stopped the user
from logging in.
Granted, this is an edge case, as it appears to have affected some
people, and not others.
> How can I fix it? [pause while I do research] Okay, it's written in C. I'm
> not a C programmer.
checkinstall is a shell script. I have just looked at it and seen some
problems that may be the cause of the bug report. I will email the bug
report with my findings.
>
> > If all you want to do is install vlc then you can use apt pinning and
> > install the version from unstable.
>
> Sure, but I shouldn't have to, and that won't get VLC into the next Stable.
> Nor will that fix the weirdly-ignored checkinstall.
In it's current state VLC will not be in the next stable, as it violates
the DFSG, and as such will not be distributed by Debian. It seems like
the intent is for it to be free software though, so the problems can
probably be sorted.
James
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