Re: lilo removal in squeeze (or, "please test grub2")

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Tue, 25 May 2010 07:08:20 -0400 (EDT), Mihamina Rakotomandimby wrote:
> William Pitcock <nenolod@dereferenced.org> wrote:
>> This bug *can* be fixed, but not without a significant rewrite of the
>> way that lilo's stage2 loader code works.  Given that there is no
>> active upstream and that the Debian lilo package carries many patches
>> for bug fixes that are alleviated by standardizing on grub2, this
>> seems like the best option for Debian.
> 
> Agreed: dead (and buggy) softwares must be out of the distribution.
> Whatever happens. If LILO regains upstream coders, its return to the
> distribution is quite easy.

By that standard, grub-pc should be removed from the distribution.
It may have upstream support, but based on other posts I've seen, it
effectively has no maintainer.  Which is worse, a package with
effectively no upstream support or a package with effectively no
maintainer?  And grub-pc is buggier than lilo.

I understand the need to remove packages with no upstream support.
But asking users to test a package with umpteen known release-critical
bugs, most of which have apparently been fixed upstream, but have
not been fixed in Debian because there is no maintainer to download
a new upstream version, is not a reasonable request in my humble
opinion.  Get a maintainer for it, fix the known bugs, and *then*
ask the users to test it.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
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