LWN: Comments on "Debian etch freeze to be delayed"

In defense of amaya

lacostej — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:18:36 +0000

> there's no Firefox for webpage composition

See nvu.com and now composer (rewritten for latest gecko)

http://www.glazman.org/weblog/

(Based on old Mozilla composer)

In defense of amaya

thedevil — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 05:18:47 +0000

> Why bugs in a browser that almost nobody uses like amaya

OK, but amaya is not primarily a browser. It can be used as one, but more importantly it is a webpage composer tool. I suggest that all the registered users (reported in the other subthread) installed it for that purpose. When that is considered it may appear a bit more important (there's no Firefox for webpage composition).

Debian packages are prioritised

bignose — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:52:38 +0000

> the huge number of packages implies that it's just not possible to
> release a RC-free release.

Certainly it is possible. You may be misunderstanding what it means to say that a bug is "release-critical": it is not that the *release* is in jeopardy of releasing, but that the *package* is in jeapordy of not being included with the release.

If a bug on a package is considered release-critical, one of the ways of resolving that status is to omit that package from the release. This is the last resort in cases where the bug cannot be closed (or, in a few cases, determined no longer to be high severity) in time for the release.

> It's just not fair and not productive to consider that all packages have
> the same priority.

If Debian did treat all packages the same, that sounds like the *definition* of fair treatment to me :-)

As it happens, though, Debian does prioritise packages: http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkg_basics.en.html#s-pri...

It is these priorities that lead to different attitudes when the time comes to decide on the omission of a package from a release.

Again, the needs of a reorganization of the whole project

ballombe — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:17:13 +0000

You link to the wrong listing: recent show the number of people who upgraded this package recently. Actually, amaya is the 3280th most used package. Not that made much of a difference...

Again, the needs of a reorganization of the whole project

cortana — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:54:55 +0000

Well... interestingly, Amaya is not presently in testing. It is not holding up the release. As with many debian.org facilities, the most useful web pages are the unofficial ones. See Unofficial RC-Bugs Count, for example.

FYI, amaya is the 4338th (out of 23984) used package in Debian, with just 31 users. There is also a graph of this data. So the RMs are unlikely to hold up the release to allow it to propogate back in.

Again, the needs of a reorganization of the whole project

dcg — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:26:30 +0000

Just take a look at: http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/debian/main.html

Some of the "release critical bugs" are bugs that affect packages like..."amaya"

Why bugs in a browser that almost nobody uses like amaya should have right to be considered "release critical" at the same level of priority than gnome-session? There're like 15.000 packages in debian. It's not surprising that there're always a huge number of RC bugs in debian: the huge number of packages implies that it's just not possible to release a RC-free release. Worse, RC bugs in more important packages like X.org/gnome/kde/apache may get less attention because of this. Sure, bugs in the base-system get more attention, but the base-system is a unrealistic view of the real "base-systems" that are used in real world installs.

It's just not fair and not productive to consider that all packages have the same priority. It happens the same WRT security issues. Debian should have some priorities.