>>>>> "CP" == Christian Perrier <bubu...@debian.org> writes:
CP> The duty of the Debian maintainer is to smooth down impacts from CP> upstream changes. One of the recognized qualities of Debian is CP> such stability. So, we need to prepare our stable releases to CP> avoid such breakages. CP> Another is probably bringing feedback to upstream that such CP> changes are very unwished by their users. This is not the first time .css format change has happened. And yes, it was reported and discussed upstream in the past. They are willing to avoid such changes but it may not always be easy. More pressure (i.e. from more users) on the upstream maintainers may or may not improve things. The .css format is generally not considered as very fixed, e.g. it's not portable across architectures after all. There were other upgrade problems in the past. For instance, I personally don't simply believe .crm scripts from the last version work with a new one without changes and I always test that crm114 still works after the upgrade. I'd say that backward compatibility is not a crm114 feature and one must expect problems when upgrading crm114 to a new version. Of course, a user may not think about crm114 when typing `apt-get upgrade'. This wouldn't be a big problem if crm114 wasn't typically used for things like e-mail delivery. So the primary problem is how to _warn_ users that crm114 gets upgraded with higher than casual risk of breaking things. The current practice of warning about important changes in NEWS.Debian seemed to work well so far. But I agree it may not be enough and I'm open to suggestions how to improve it. CP> But, at least, I expect my problems to benefit other users and CP> particularly to avoid what I consider to be enhanced to enter CP> testing and then break much more setups. Sure, you brave unstable users get hit by such problems and by reporting them you prevent wider impacts. CP> At the very minimum, a critical priority debconf note displayed CP> when upgrading from a pre-20090423 version would be a good way CP> to try your best preventing the problem to appear. Debconf notes CP> are discouraged but I think that, here, we have a case where it CP> would be better having it than nothing. Right now, I like this suggestion better than the binary package name changes. Some might not like it, but I may just try to add it and we'll see what happens. CP> I also came back on the NEWS.Debian entry and I think it is not CP> alarming enough as it mentions "on some architectures" (which a CP> careless reader would translate to "probably not on the most CP> common ones") and it just mentions that CRM114 might not work CP> but not that....mails piped through it will vanish. Good remark. CP> Maybe more people will come up with better suggestions. If no applicable precedent in other Debian packages is presented here, I'll probably discuss the problem on debian-mentors. CP> I really think that this bug should remain release critical so CP> that it gets the deserved attention by both you and other CP> developers (I bet that many use crm114 and many clever people CP> can come up with good suggestions....this is also what RC bugs CP> are about). Of course, I don't get rid of RC bugs without discussing them first. CP> Please accept some forms of apologies for showing up my "rage" CP> in the bug report (I admit I was) but also please don't take the CP> RC bug as a personal attack but more as a way to help you to CP> provide the best possible package for that software. There is no need to apologize. I just missed identification of the _Debian package_ problem in your initial report and you've fixed it now. :-) Thanks for the report. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org