FESCo wants to ban direct stable pushes in Bodhi (urgent call for feedback)

[Matthew Garrett]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 08:41:07PM +0100, Till Maas wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 07:18:58PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 08:15:43PM +0100, Till Maas wrote:
> > 
> > > 1) to fix a bug or add a feature the maintainer experienced/uses
> > 
> > If nobody is complaining about the bug, then fixing the bug can wait 
> > until the next Fedora release.
> 
> Why even fix the bug in Fedora at all then, if the maintainer needs to
> create his own sub-distro with updated packages? Also why is the
> maintainer always nobody?

The maintainer's convenience is significantly less important than that 
of the end-users.

> > > 2) As already told several times, not having people to test something
> > > does not mean that the package is not used
> > 
> > If they're not complaining, they're presumably happy with the current 
> > state of the package?
> 
> Please come back to reality. They can also be too frustrated to report
> the bug in Fedora, if it is already fixed upstream. And why should
> people hit bugs again in Fedora that are already fixed upstream?

Propose a mechanism that allows you to ensure that new upstream releases 
do not include any new bugs. We *know* that there are users who are 
frustrated because it's difficult to follow a stable Fedora release 
without things breaking. What we're discussing is a mechanism to reduce 
the pain there, not one that makes it impossible for people to get their 
hands on newer versions of software if the maintainer has packaged them.

> > > 3) It allows new users of the package not to find/debug the bugs again that
> > > are already fixed upstream
> > 
> > If they're willing to debug, why are they not willing to test?
> 
> Since the users are new, they are not yet there to test a package. But I
> would also not be interested to test old packages just to find out that
> the bugs I found are fixed in a newer release. And this already hit me
> several times. I wanted to do something, installed the Fedora package,
> found a bug, and realise that the bug is fixed in a new upstream
> release. The only benefit of Fedora in this case is that I can easier
> build the new package for me, because the spec is already there.

I'm confused now. If the maintainer hasn't uploaded a newer version, 
then requiring testing for updates makes no difference. If the 
maintainer has, why would the new user be testing an old version?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org