Package: qa.debian.org Severity: wishlist Helping people on #debian, I often need to work out why a package is no longer available. This tends to be asked in the following situations:
* why isn't package xyz available in lenny (or squeeze or sid)? It used to exist in etch! (Answer: could be renamed, dead upstream, etc) * why isn't package xyz available in lenny? it's in both etch and sid! (Answer: it was removed from testing just before release because it was RC buggy, but working out precisely why this is can be harder after the release has been made) * why isn't package xyz available in testing but it's in unstable? (Answer: all the usual migration and rc buggy reasons and fairly easy to answer these days) A recent example was the grace6 package. So let's see what was required: 1. Go to the source package's QA page http://packages.qa.debian.org/g/grace6.html 2. look down the list of News items to find a "Removed from unstable" entry 3. look at news item to see bug number 4. go to bugs.debian.org/bugnumber 5. finally I get to look at the reasons why the package was removed Solving the "why did package xyz not make it into the current stable release" question is usually just a matter of wandering down to find the "removed from testing" news entry instead and repeating the above process. It would be *much* nicer if the QA page had a link to the RM bug itself as that cuts out quite a few manual steps in the middle. So instead of: [2009-06-14] Removed 5.99.1+dev4-7 from unstable (Frank Lichtenheld) can we have [2009-06-14] Removed 5.99.1+dev4-7 from unstable #459484 "RM: grace6 -- RoQA; orphaned, buggy, not really version 6" (Frank Lichtenheld) or similar? (with appropriate hyperlinks) Have thoughts! cheers Stuart -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org