thunderbird-24.0.2 reverted - why? (Use the commit log..., Luke)

[Michael J Gruber]

Jan Horak venit, vidit, dixit 24.09.2013 16:00:
> On 09/24/2013 10:16 AM, Michael J Gruber wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I can see that thunderbird 24 had been built successfully and then
>> reverted on the fc18 branch (and others). The git commit log and the
>> spec changelog say
>>
>> Revert to 17.0.8
>>
>> and nothing else. I do understand that more than a "successful build" is
>> necessary for a package to be pushed, but can we please agree on putting
>> some substantial information on "why" (not just "what") into the git log
>> or change log?
>>
>> As a guidance, in many git based project, the following standard for git
>> messages has proven useful:
>>
>> 1st line: short description of "what"
>>
>> 1st paragraph: long description of "what" along the lines of:
>> So far, "foo" does "bar". Change "froz" so that it does "baz".
>>
>> 2nd paragraph (or mixed in with 2nd): answer "why"
>> The problem with "bar" is this. "baz" solves the problem by doing that.
>>
>> This information could also be in bugzilla and linked to from the git
>> log or changelog, of course. All of this is easier than answering
>> e-mails or posts, and better for record keeping anyways.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Michael
> We've decided to revert package because it broke dependencies with 
> thunderbird-lightning. Decision to rebase package to 24 was made a bit 
> in a hurry and since we wasn't able to rebase to lightning 2.6 fast 
> enough we decide to use 17.0.9 ESR to keep our users secure. We're 
> trying to deliver security updates as fast as we can because we think 
> that's most important for users. I'm a bit unsure if keeping max version 
> (ie. Requires: thunderbird < %{thunderbird_next_version}) for dependent 
> packages is fruitful here because older plugin doesn't make Thunderbird 
> unusable, it only disables addons which is not compatible with newer 
> version (a nuisance but at least security issues are fixed) and this 
> affect only some users.
> 
> For the next rebase time (Thunderbird 31?), I'll consider update to 
> another 24.0.X ESR to make transition more smooth. So sorry for 
> confusion and thanks everyone who let us know by karma.
> 

Thanks for the info, Jan.

I guess I shouldn't open the can of worms labelled "do (not) package
non-binary extensions as rpm" ;)

I had missed the bodhi comment, but the above explains everything well.

Maybe we'll find a way to use git more gittish one day. If the git
commit messages or notes automated the process of generating a spec
changelog or bodhy comments people would be happily filling them in, I
guess!

Cheers,
Michael