Package: release.debian.org Severity: wishlist Dear Release Managers:
Back in November I started to check and report each and every source package for which "dpkg-buildpackage -A" fails. Approximately 293 bugs so far have been filed about this issue: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=binary-indep;users=sanv...@debian.org Most of them (182) are already fixed and a bunch of the remaining ones have patches available. With this report I'd like to ask for permission to consider this as a release goal for stretch. This way the bugs would be raised to serious and they would be treated like any other FTBFS bug. Making this a release goal would mean that each and every package in stretch (once it's stable) would be suitable to be uploaded in source-only form. I think this feature would be particularly interesting for the security team. If you agree on making this a release goal, I can think of two ways of doing this: 1) The wording in this page could be modified: https://release.debian.org/stretch/rc_policy.txt Currently it says: Packages must autobuild without failure on all architectures on which they are supported. Maybe adding "This requirement includes the traditional architecture-specific autobuilders and also the "Arch: all" autobuilder". or something alike. 2) Or maybe we could just state that "Packages must autobuild" implicitly refers to all available autobuilders, but in such case an official statement from you clarifying how the paragraph should be interpreted would help. In case this release goal is accepted, I'm open for suggestions about how to proceed (for example, if a last warning mail should be sent to the bug reports before raising severities, waiting for a week or two, etc. things like that). Thanks.