BEWARE: a problematic glibc made it to stable (F16)

Rex Dieter rdieter at math.unl.edu
Sun Oct 23 22:04:48 UTC 2011


Kevin Kofler wrote:

> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> glibc-2.14.90-12.999, which has just made it to stable provokes a
>> hard-to-diagnose (for me at least) problem.
>> 
>> While most things work, and it fixed two problems that affected me,
>> it caused me some frustration:
>> 
>> https//bugzilla.redhat.com/747377
> 
> glibc-2.14.90-12.999 also breaks the build of ANY C++ code using fenv.h,
> which affects at least Qt (but likely also several other C++ packages,
> particularly mathematical ones, but not only, as can be seen from Qt).
> Thankfully, that showstopper is fixed in -13 which is already in stable by
> now (because it was aggressively up-karma'd by the KDE SIG).
> 
> The fact that a glibc with showstoppers of this kind got pushed to stable
> shows that the karma system does not work at all.

It worked in a way, but was an interesting case. 

As I see it, the general series of events went something like this:
-10  was *generally* ok
-11 fixed a few bugs, but introduced the nasty "breaks grokking of 
/etc/groups", down karma'd
-12 fixed some other bug, down-karma'd for not fixing -11
-12.999 got massive up-karma for fixing -11 problem, *but* introduced a new 
problem/regression.  Got pushed stable.
-13 was, of course, damage control from the fall-out from 12.999...

Now, I'd argue the process worked up to -12.999, regressions were kept out 
of stable updates.

The fail(*), imo, was with 12.999 going stable containing known-regressions.  
So, any suggestions, if any, to prevent any similar series of events?



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