[Mageia-dev] please stop doing "bugs" for updating magia 1

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org> wrote:
> Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 17:48 +0100, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
>> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse
>> <guillomovitch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Le 11/01/2012 16:09, Antoine Pitrou a écrit :
>> >
>> >> As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix
>> >> releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro.
>> >
>> > You'd rather read the current update policy, rather than expect blind
>> > assertions:
>> > https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy
>>
>> Whoa - this is a rather stupid policy. (my opinion, yours obviously differs).
>> "For the most part, an update should consist of a <bold>patched build
>> of the same version</bold> of the package released with the
>> distribution,"
>
> I am pretty sure that you can express yourself without starting by
> insulting people.

Well, if you feel insulted when I state my personal opinion about the
policy, then I cannot help it.
I also find a different word for it - In my opinion it is a stupid
policy. It might not reflect what was discussed on the mailinglist,
but that is not my fault either - I can only judge what is written on
that wiki-page, and once again: that policy doesn't make any sense to
me.
Feeling insulted means that you apparently were deeply involved in
formulating the policy, too bad, but cannot be helped. Sorry if your
feelings are hurt.

>> Welcome to distro-isolation, putting burden on maintainers, giving
>> them all the reason to deny a reasonable request for a bugfix release
>> because it just is too much work to hunt for a specific commit that
>> fixed bug x.
>
> If that's too much work for a maintainer and if that's important for
> you, you can :
> - do your own package, supported by yourself for yourself

I do for the packages I care of.

> or :
> - provide the patch

No, that's pointless. I'd rather supply the patch upstream, so it will
be integrated in the upstream package.

> If that's too much work for you too, then that's likely too much work
> for others too.

You're mixing stuff around: We/I am talking about the case when there
*is* an bugfix release available from upstream, but the policy
dictates to extract individual patches for a subset of the fixes only-
and that subset being bugs filed in mageia's bugzilla. This doesn't
make sense.
If the maintainer could use the fixed upstream release, then all that
is needed is to bumb the version-tag in the spec and rebuild. You
don't question that this is easier than hunting down a patch and
adding that to the package, do you?
Any cases where just bumping the version and rebuilding won't work are
cases that don't fall in the bugfix-only category.

>> > [...]
>> > A bug may vary from a typo in a man page to a critical security update,
>>
>> And a typo-fix is not worthwhile to have?
>
> When we take in account the fact it would still need proper QA, there is
> likely stuff that are more important than a typo. And a typo is just a
> extreme case, and a simplificaition. If we start to have a complex
> update policy, we are just losing time for almost nothing.

No doubt about that - the above statement was more meant in the terms
of only applying selective fixes by patch, as opposed to taking the
release that has those bugs fixed+additional easy stuff.
So why only fix "bug that is reported in mageia's bugzilla", but not
"the typo that was fixed upstream".

>> Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you
>> are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one
>> commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the
>> regressions?
>
> For 1, we usually do not do distro patch. I personnaly think this should
> be avoided as much as possible, and that we should push as much patch
> upstream. We have a rather huge backlog to clean.
>
> For 2, we also usually take patch from upstream. Some of us are also
> good enough to understand patchs, and to see what they mean, if they fix
> something, etc. Of course, there is some software that are rather
> specialized or obscure, but that's far from being the majority.

So then again: what makes selectively fixing bugs better in terms of
regression prevention than applying a bugfix release from upstream?
You an Juan Luis basically say: Less changes, less chance for
breakage. This is a "Milchmädchenrechnung"  (naive assessment of the
situation). Fixed done by upstream are applied by people familiar with
the code in question, usually way  more familiar than the package
maintainer. Yes the regressions do happen. Even if a fix looks simple,
it can introduce a regression.
And by only selectively applying patches it means that: You might have
a "lesser chance" of regressions, but instead of the regressions you
still have the other "regular bugs" that were fixed.

>> Regressions have the nice habit of being triggered by changes in
>> apparently unrelated code...
>
> And that's why we should reduce the number of changes.

That's why reducing the number of changes won't help.

> Maybe if you started to be less insulting, and instead started to look
> at the discussion on the ml in the past on the list,

I might have had if the wiki policy did point to it.

> when the policy was
> discussed ( and access to the old wiki too ), you would likely find the
> reasons saner.

Even with your explanations (thanks for taking the time), I still
disagree and still don't find them any more sane than before.

The only good thing that you made clear is that you discourage
distro-only patches, but instead favor fixed that are directly from
upstream.

ciao
Christian