[Mageia-dev] please stop doing "bugs" for updating magia 1

Thu Jan 12 12:19:02 CET 2012

On Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:27:59 Antoine Pitrou wrote:
+> On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:05:34 +0200
+> 
+> Buchan Milne <bgmilne at zarb.org> wrote:
+> > An approach that doens't include a bug filed with the distribution means
+> > the user doesn't really seem interested in receiving an update from the
+> > distribution.
+> 
+> Do note there are bugs that may go unnoticed by the user even though
+> they are affected (for example if they have to do with resource
+> consumption or subtle data corruption or other reliability stuff).
+
+Right, and in most cases, upstreams should make enough noise about issues like 
+that so maintainers know to push an update. Upstreams that don't are 
+irresponsible, or have their heads in the ground.
+
+> > If you just want every new piece of software as soon as possible, you
+> > should run Cauldron.
+> 
+> Obviously, that's not what I want.
+> 
+> > 1)Why users who are not affected by some obscure bug (e.g. typo in a man
+> > page they will never read) should be forced to download unnecessary
+> > packages (at high cost in some cases)
+> 
+> This is already the case. Regularly Mageia suggests me updates that I
+> have not asked for since I have not filed a bug for them (and may not
+> even be affected).
+
+'users who are unaffected' and 'I didn't ask for an update' are vastly 
+different things. But, it seems you also don't want to get an unnecessarily 
+huge volume of updates ...
+
+> Besides, your example is silly: I don't know of a software project that
+> makes new releases only to fix typos in man pages. Bugfix releases *do*
+> contain worthwhile fixes.
+
+Sure, but on average, probably 75% or more of the software in a release will 
+have some upstream release that has at least one bugfix in it per year, does 
+that mean that we should ship updates to 75% of the packages for each 
+supported distro every year?
+
+> > 2)How you will identify all upstreams which have a good history of
+> > bugfix-only releases, and how you will automate the selection of these
+> > packages to go to updates, and how you will streamline this process
+> > through QA.
+> 
+> Each packager can decide if their upstream package is well-behaved or
+> not. Of course, better be conservative and not package bugfix releases
+> if you aren't totally confident. Still, some upstream teams *are*
+> well-behaved.
+
+Right, and this is (mostly) done, although IMHO the updates policy needs to be 
+updated to make this more explicit.
+
+> > Anyway, you seem to be of the assumption that all the contributors to the
+> > distribution you are using have so much more time on their hands than you
+> > do, while in actual fact I believe almost all contributors are *very*
+> > contstrained on time.
+> 
+> Relying on upstream for bug fixes may actually free some of the time
+> spent doing custom patching and testing.
+
+You assume:
+1)Upstream and packager have no relationship
+2)Bugfixes are done in isolation
+
+> But I agree volunteer time is a
+> big blocker in most open source projects.
+> 
+> > If you don't think it is worth your time to help out, why should we
+> > waste time (which could be used to ensure the next release has all
+> > bugfixes) on new bugfix releases we don't need?
+> 
+> Usually bugs are fixed for a reason (i.e. they affect someone
+> somewhere). Why you think people don't need bug fixes is beyond me:
+
+That wasn't the argument. The argument is that there is a cost to every 
+update, and the question that has to be answered is whether the minimal 
+improvement in some package is worth the time, effort, resource, bandwidth 
+involved, or whether the user is better served by having a completely up-to-
+date minimal-bug-affected-release 2 months later, than having 1000 updates 
+shipped every month and a new low quality release in 2 months, which forces 
+more updates down their expensive internet connection, leaving them with a 
+high cost, low quality experience.
+
+> Mageia users aren't, presumably, more stupid / more careless than users
+> of other distributions.
+
+No, but the point of Mageia is to provide a usable distribution, not one where 
+you get breakage every 2nd week due to supposed 'bugfix' releases of new 
+software.
+
+Regards,
+Buchan
+