[Mageia-dev] [Freeze] please let in xonotic

[Colin Guthrie]

'Twas brillig, and Florian Hubold at 11/03/12 17:12 did gyre and gimble:
> Am 11.03.2012 17:58, schrieb Samuel Verschelde:
>> Le dimanche 11 mars 2012 13:21:57, Michael Scherer a écrit :
>>> Le samedi 10 mars 2012 à 10:26 +0100, Thierry Vignaud a écrit :
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> please let in xonotic-0.6.0
>>>> It's just a game that impacts nothing else.
>>> Niet.
>>>
>>> That's bugfix or security fixes.
>> Communication tip for the future : when such a policy change happens
>> (this is
>> a policy change, there were more exceptions in the past before package
>> freeze,
>> for leaf packages without weird deps and post/pre scripts and little
>> impact),
>> let's try to highlight it *before*.
>>
>> There was a communication effort to announce the freeze: I read freeze
>> announce, was present at the last packager meeting. However it didn't
>> struck
>> me, it all looked like the usual end of release cycle, with their
>> common-sense
>> exceptions.
>>
>> A message such as "contrarily as what happened in the past" (this is the
>> important part, highlight a *change*), "there will be no exception
>> even for
>> leaf non-critical packages, so that you all focus on bugfixes, as we
>> know that
>> otherwise you will not fix bugs and continue updating your packages".
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Samuel
>>
> I can only chime in with Stormi, in last packager meeting ennael
> said that new packages would be allowed during the freeze,
> but we should focus on bug fixes, which is comprehensible.
> Also misc didn't say anything that new packages are disallowed.
> 
> So when did this change and who changed it? Or is it just that the
> reason given for xonotic was not enough?
> 
> I'm just asking in advance, because i've not gotten around to properly
> testing qtsixa, which i wanted to add for Mageia 2 and to resolve
> https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3362
> Because i didn't want to import it untested, and another problem
> is that i can't spare a physical cauldron installation, which made
> testing a lot more difficult, it's not in Mageia yet.
> 
> Also what about adding hardware support as e.g. needed for
> https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4249 ?
> Also disallowed?


Without wanting to cause any problems, I think think this particular
issue has gotten a little out of hand.

Policy is there for a reason, and we all accept those reasons. We also
accept that rules are made to be broken and I think it can sometimes be
said that strict adherence to policy can often be forgone for reasons of
diplomacy and based on risk vs. reward.

During the mga1 freeze phase, there were was certainly a more relaxed
approach and I don't think it did any harm, rather the opposite. And by
"harm" I mean both to the quality of the distro and to the community at
large.

While I don't personally give two hoots about this package, I suspect
(and this is just my guess) that misc would have probably pushed the
package if he'd known it would have caused such a blow out, to avoid the
general hassle (but the same would not be true if the package had been a
more core package). Again this is just my suspicion.


However, I do feel we need to be more generally open to freeze pushes.
The justification in this case, IMO, was sufficient and in line with the
previous interpretations of policy we have expected in the past, but I
completely respect misc if he still disagrees.

But, please let's all try not get too worked up about this either way.

I'm now going away to try and work out how I can word my freeze push
request regarding PulseAudio... (only made possible by new kernel) :p

Col


-- 

Colin Guthrie
colin(at)mageia.org
http://colin.guthr.ie/

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