Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thursday, 12 January 2012 22:25:51 Christian Lohmaier wrote: Hi Florian, On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier: [..] PS: Maybe next time you could improve on your wording, the policy may currently be incorrect, not reflecting good packaging practices, but as it's only a policy written by humans, it's not dumb. Just a hint. ;) No, I disagree. The policy as written is dumb in my opinion. I wouldn't say it is dumb, I would say it is conservative. Can you off-hand provide a list of which of our ~10 000 packages have a 'maintained bugfix only branch with regular releases' policy? I would expect it is less than 5%. Granted, this may include a number of large/important packages. But, I can also post some counter-examples: -samba (but, it may be useful to have some not-strictly-bugfix changes, as some are 'compatability with the new SP of some other popular OS') -openldap If you publish a policy, and the policy is incorrect, the whole process of using policies is worthless. So I /have/ to assume that the policy reflects the decisions/conclusions from the discussions by people running the project. I think some of the existing policies may have been done in haste. IMHO, there should be a policy on policies, covering how they are agreed upon, how amendments are agreed up etc. To me it stays a silly/stupid policy. Please provide a proposal for changes to the policy. Regards, Buchan
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Christian Lohmaier a écrit : On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptistejuan...@mageia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptistejuan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. I strongly disagree. The policy is stating the exact opposite. And also Michael seems to defend the policy as it is written, and not your interpretation here. No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. But then you're *not* doing as the policy says, as policy says: same version of the package *released with the distribution* So whatever version that ended up in the initial release of the distro. Not what is available upstream. To make things entirely clear, the agreed base policy (in various meetings) was that updates should contain no new features. Thus in general, a (verified) bug fix only release from upstream would qualify as an update. This being subject to exceptions, which were later agreed on after much discussion. Of course, to conform with our base policy of no new features in updates, if an upstream release contains any new features (and doesn't qualify for the exceptions), then bug fixes obviously have to be applied in patches. (Which is probably why the editor of the wiki page erred.) (Other factors, such as version number dependancies, would have to be considered as well.) In other respects, this page accords with agreed policy. I don't really see the point of doing all this arguing about a wiki page that doesn't completely accord with update policy. We just have to fix the wiki page. The thing about bugfix only releases is something that it seems packagers have been doing implicitly as pterjan said before, and needs to be added to the policy. Yes, but this then changes the policy drastically (for the better, so please change it) It is not that drastic a change. The effect is essentially the same, although it is of course much easier -- and generally safer -- to apply a (verified) bug fix only release from upstream. As stated above, and mentioned by others posting to this thread, the wiki page does not accurately affect the policy. (It is focusing on a means of complying with the policy, rather than the policy itself.) And when I write whatever is against the policy - I'm referring to what is written in the wiki, not what people actually do. Policy is what was agreed on, and not any errors that may exist in what is written in the wiki. We have corrected many similar errors in the wiki. Calling your understanding of the policy stupid is not necessarily the most diplomatic approach. ciao Christian Regards -- André
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 10:28 AM, andre999 andre999...@laposte.net wrote: Christian Lohmaier a écrit : On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptistejuan...@mageia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptistejuan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] To make things entirely clear, the agreed base policy (in various meetings) was that updates should contain no new features. Thus in general, a (verified) bug fix only release from upstream would qualify as an update. This being subject to exceptions, which were later agreed on after much discussion. Thanks - this is the first time this has been stated explicitly. I don't really see the point of doing all this arguing about a wiki page that doesn't completely accord with update policy. We just have to fix the wiki page. Well - if you don't bother whether your policies are correct, you should not bother to publish them in the first place but refer to whatever was discussed on the mailinglists. Yes, you have to fix the wiki page. But judging from this discussion people did not know what really is correct. The arguing is not about the wiki-page, but about the policy that is reflected by that wiki page. You did now clarify the policy as it should be, and that is fine. But please understand that the written policy did reflect a completely different picture. Yes, but this then changes the policy drastically (for the better, so please change it) It is not that drastic a change. The effect is essentially the same, No, It is a drastic change from what is written. It probably is no big difference compared to what people actually do today, but the policy is changed drastically by this change. although it is of course much easier -- and generally safer -- to apply a (verified) bug fix only release from upstream. As stated above, and mentioned by others posting to this thread, the wiki page does not accurately affect the policy. Well, you might have a different interpretation of this thread, but I see people strongly supporting the policy as is written on the wiki, so it is far from clear. And when I write whatever is against the policy - I'm referring to what is written in the wiki, not what people actually do. Policy is what was agreed on, and not any errors that may exist in what is written in the wiki. We have corrected many similar errors in the wiki. If things were so clear, than people could have written exactly what you did and not continue with this discussion for so long. Calling your understanding of the policy stupid is not necessarily the most diplomatic approach. Again: I did judge what is written in the wiki. When policies are published, I have no other choice than to assume that what is written reflects the policy that was discussed and decided upon. And while it might not be diplomatic, I for sure prefer people actually writing what they mean. I of course fully agree that just writing foo sucks without stating how foo could suck less is inappropriate/waste of time. But well - thanks for making a concrete statement of what the policy /actually/ is. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 20:22:23 Antoine Pitrou wrote: On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the regressions? Because as I said earlier, we backport the commit that fixes that single issue, based on the info found on the bugzilla report of the upstream project. But how do you choose which patches you want to backport from the stream of bugfixes done by upstream? Speaking for myself, and using openldap as an example: 1)I am active on the mailing lists (e.g. openldap-technical) 2)I am subscribed to the bugs mailing list (openldap-its) 3)I check commits in git for the OPENLDAP_REL_ENG_2_4 branch Typically, if I see 'crasher' in the commimt, I'll look at using that patch for an update. Should the packager monitor all bug fixing activity? (sure (s)he *can*, but that's a lot of work) Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker. (also, other users don't bother reporting bugs at all :-)) And this is the reason I would like to see backports, so I can: 1)Provide bugfix and security updates with no regressions, in updates 2)Provide latest upstream stable release in backports, so a user can conveniently contribute (e.g. bug reports) upstream. But, note that pushing unwanted packages to 99% of our users is not a solution either, we don't want to be Fedora, where every month you effectively have a new distribution ... Regards, Buchan
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 22:05:53 Antoine Pitrou wrote: On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:41:54 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: As I said, when there's a bug report on mga, we start investigating the problem and go and look at upstream for a bug report there for *that* particular bug. So let me repeat myself from two messages above (!): “Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Why not? IMHO, a user who experiences a bug has two effective paths they can follow to get a bugfix: 1)File a bug with the distribution, and have the distribution worry about reporting or fixing the bug and providing an update 2)File a bug upstream, when the bug is fixed uptream, file a bug with the distributor, referencing the upstream bug 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. If you just want every new piece of software as soon as possible, you should run Cauldron. If you believe every bugfix-only-release from every piece of software should be pushed out by distributions, can you clarify: 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) 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. 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. 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? Regards, Buchan
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:05:34 +0200 Buchan Milne bgmi...@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). 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). 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. 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. 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. 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: Mageia users aren't, presumably, more stupid / more careless than users of other distributions. Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le 12/01/2012 10:27, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : 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. Some means actually a very few minority among our thousands packages. And even when upstream new release is perfectly safe, we're dealing with binary updates here, meaning we also have to ensure the build environment is perfectly similar (same compiler and build chain version, for instance). Even today, when we try to always rebuild everything just before release, we can't ensure it perfectly. This means there is no 0% risk situation. Meaning we can never be perfectly confident. Also, there is a responsability issue. Would you assume providing an update disclaiming any kind of liability such as here is a perfectly safe update from us, but if it ever breaks anything, blame someone else ? All of this involves the need of a balance between involved work, estimated risks, and expected benefits. The first factor being mostly related to available workforce, you're welcome to join the team to modify this balance. -- BOFH excuse #392: It's union rules. There's nothing we can do about it. Sorry.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:27:59 Antoine Pitrou wrote: On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:05:34 +0200 Buchan Milne bgmi...@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
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Buchan Milne a écrit : On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 22:10:01 Juan Luis Baptiste wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Michael Schererm...@zarb.org wrote: Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 11:24 -0500, Juan Luis Baptiste a écrit : So trusting and having bugs are totally unrelated. And if you doubt that bugs appear, just see our bugzilla. We trust upstream ( most of them ), and yet there is bugs. No, they're not totally unrelated when we don't have the man power to do through QA on every package, we need to trust on the packager (and upstream of course) that he did his best to test the new version without expecting him to have tested all the new features, Or do you expect that a QA member get a list of all the new features of a backport and start testing them one by one ? that's what I call unrealistic in practice. If you think that all version backports should be tested in the same way as updates by QA, then all versions upgrades in cauldron should be tested by QA before pushing them to the BS right ? No, they should be tested before being put in the stable release. And that's exactly what we do by freezing and testing before release. Of course but again, we can't test *all* the new features of *all* the programs that are going to a new release, we do our best for most of them. Critical components like installer, kernel, drak* tools, etc need more testing and that's where (our very small team) QA should spend their time after a freeze. The rest we have to do our best to test after each version update of a package. And this is IMHO why we should not necessarily enforce full QA on backports. It is ridiculous to enforce more testing on a package in backports, than most likely was done for it while in cauldron before a release, especially considering the user has a relatively easy mechanism for reverting to the working package. If QA can state definitively that every package in a release is fully tested, then I might agree. But, some of the reason to *have* backports is to allow users on stable releases to test new versions that exist in cauldron. Regards, Buchan +1 If I remember correctly, our early discussions on backports proposed that most of the responsibility for testing would be by those requesting the backport in question, and the developer and/or maintainer. So that QA would give priority to regular updates. And that backports may have somewhat less testing, although we would try to give the same level of testing as regular updates. The requirement to have them first in cauldron was at least partly related to increasing the quality of backports. I agree that it is important to enable backports, to help ensure a higher quality than will likely result with too much use of 3rd-party repos. Regards -- André
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thursday 12 January 2012 10:05, Buchan Milne wrote: many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Why not? Why should they? As far as the average Joe is concerned they should only have to file a bug one place. This is how many of them think. And I agree with them. 1)File a bug with the distribution, and have the distribution worry about reporting or fixing the bug and providing an update 2)File a bug upstream, when the bug is fixed uptream, file a bug with the distributor, referencing the upstream bug My experience is that if they file a bug report in the first place, they Either contact the upstream developer or the distribution's bugzilla team. They never do both, as they believe that doing both is a waste of time, since the fixed version eventually find it's way to the distribution anyway. 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. Incorrect assumption. As someone who is the support service for some users I have some experience with this. They assume that any serious bug will be fixed in one of the next releaces, because that's how it works with Microsoft. And they haven't heard of anyone filing any bug at Microsoft. The bugs just get fixed without them ever repporting anything, and they assume that this is how things are supposed to work. Sometimes they even think that what we consider as bugs, they believe it is how things are supposed to work. If they're not happy with how the system works, they often conclude that Linux Sucks Ass, and move back to Windows or OS X. -- Johnny A. Solbu PGP key ID: 0xFA687324 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thursday, 12 January 2012 16:45:39 Johnny A. Solbu wrote: On Thursday 12 January 2012 10:05, Buchan Milne wrote: many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Why not? Why should they? As far as the average Joe is concerned they should only have to file a bug one place. This is how many of them think. And I agree with them. 1)File a bug with the distribution, and have the distribution worry about reporting or fixing the bug and providing an update 2)File a bug upstream, when the bug is fixed uptream, file a bug with the distributor, referencing the upstream bug My experience is that if they file a bug report in the first place, they Either contact the upstream developer or the distribution's bugzilla team. I covered this in (1). They never do both, as they believe that doing both is a waste of time, since the fixed version eventually find it's way to the distribution anyway. Sure, it will, on the next release of the distribution, assuming the new upstream release was before version freeze. 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. Incorrect assumption. As someone who is the support service for some users I have some experience with this. They assume that any serious bug will be fixed in one of the next releaces, But this *is* the case. What we are talking about *here*, is that the bugfix update be shipped to old releases. because that's how it works with Microsoft. Yes, non-critical release will be shipped in next SP, a year or so later. And they haven't heard of anyone filing any bug at Microsoft. Just because they haven't, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. The bugs just get fixed without them ever repporting anything, and they assume that this is how things are supposed to work. Sometimes they even think that what we consider as bugs, they believe it is how things are supposed to work. If they're not happy with how the system works, they often conclude that Linux Sucks Ass, and move back to Windows or OS X. But, your comparison is invalid. Users must pay for the privilege of upgrading to get non-critical bugfixes the latter, and wait quite some time for the former. Regards, Buchan
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Hi Juan Luis, On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. I strongly disagree. The policy is stating the exact opposite. And also Michael seems to defend the policy as it is written, and not your interpretation here. That again you might have a different understanding of bugfix-only-release. I think I stated mine often enough (increase in micro version when package follows major.minor.micro versioning scheme and no new features are introduced in micro releases). So please change the wording of the update policy accordingly https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy reads: ## For the most part, an update should consist of a patched build of the same version of the package released with the distribution, with a few exceptions: * Software versions that are no longer supported upstream with updates (firefox and thunderbird seem to fall into this category these days) * Software that is version-bound to an online service (games, virus scanners?) and will only work with the latest version. * We will make exceptions for packages that did not make it into mga1 and are additions to the distribution, provided they do not impact any other packages and can pass full QA. Updates are not the appropriate place for packages created to satisfy certain user's urges for the latest. These types of builds belong in backports. ## I read it as no version bumb is allowed (except for the three exception-cases listed) - bugs are only fixed using patches, and I don't see the interpretational freedom to allow upstream's bugfix releases. Updating from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3 would not be in compliance with the policy (if not in one of the three exception cases) - this is what I have called stupid policy (and still do). ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thursday 12 January 2012 19:01, Christian Lohmaier wrote: Updating from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3 would not be in compliance with the policy (if not in one of the three exception cases) - this is what I have called stupid policy (and still do). Hear, hear! -- Johnny A. Solbu PGP key ID: 0xFA687324 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. I strongly disagree. The policy is stating the exact opposite. And also Michael seems to defend the policy as it is written, and not your interpretation here. No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. The thing about bugfix only releases is something that it seems packagers have been doing implicitly as pterjan said before, and needs to be added to the policy. That again you might have a different understanding of bugfix-only-release. I think I stated mine often enough (increase in micro version when package follows major.minor.micro versioning scheme and no new features are introduced in micro releases). This isn't always the case, some projects include both bug fixes and new minor features in a micro version bump release. So you have to check first the Changelog to be sure it only includes bug fixes (which I do not completely agree for some cases, but that's another topic). So please change the wording of the update policy accordingly https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy reads: ## [...] ## I read it as no version bumb is allowed (except for the three exception-cases listed) - bugs are only fixed using patches, and I don't see the interpretational freedom to allow upstream's bugfix releases. Updating from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3 would not be in compliance with the policy (if not in one of the three exception cases) - this is what I have called stupid policy (and still do). Yes, this must be added to the policy to avoid more confusions. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. I strongly disagree. The policy is stating the exact opposite. And also Michael seems to defend the policy as it is written, and not your interpretation here. No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. But then you're *not* doing as the policy says, as policy says: same version of the package *released with the distribution* So whatever version that ended up in the initial release of the distro. Not what is available upstream. The thing about bugfix only releases is something that it seems packagers have been doing implicitly as pterjan said before, and needs to be added to the policy. Yes, but this then changes the policy drastically (for the better, so please change it) And when I write whatever is against the policy - I'm referring to what is written in the wiki, not what people actually do. If you don't care what is written, but do how you like, then there's no point in having written policy, and even less reason to point people to those policies to make them shut up/not ask questions. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier: Hi Juan Luis, On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: [..] As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. I strongly disagree. The policy is stating the exact opposite. And also Michael seems to defend the policy as it is written, and not your interpretation here. That again you might have a different understanding of bugfix-only-release. I think I stated mine often enough (increase in micro version when package follows major.minor.micro versioning scheme and no new features are introduced in micro releases). So please change the wording of the update policy accordingly https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy reads: ## For the most part, an update should consist of a patched build of the same version of the package released with the distribution, with a few exceptions: * Software versions that are no longer supported upstream with updates (firefox and thunderbird seem to fall into this category these days) * Software that is version-bound to an online service (games, virus scanners?) and will only work with the latest version. * We will make exceptions for packages that did not make it into mga1 and are additions to the distribution, provided they do not impact any other packages and can pass full QA. Updates are not the appropriate place for packages created to satisfy certain user's urges for the latest. These types of builds belong in backports. ## I read it as no version bumb is allowed (except for the three exception-cases listed) - bugs are only fixed using patches, and I don't see the interpretational freedom to allow upstream's bugfix releases. Updating from 1.3.2 to 1.3.3 would not be in compliance with the policy (if not in one of the three exception cases) - this is what I have called stupid policy (and still do). ciao Christian Actually you're right there, currently the only case where a bugfix-only update would be allowed would be as an exception. And as those should be rare (hence the term exception) i don't think that's the intent of the third point. So as some already stated this, as it seems to be allowed to ship bugfix-only releases as updates, where does the policy state that, and in the case where it doesn't, shouldn't we extent the policy if that is considered good practice? PS: Maybe next time you could improve on your wording, the policy may currently be incorrect, not reflecting good packaging practices, but as it's only a policy written by humans, it's not dumb. Just a hint. ;)
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. But then you're *not* doing as the policy says, as policy says: same version of the package *released with the distribution* So whatever version that ended up in the initial release of the distro. Not what is available upstream. Were do you get that ? have you even went through the updates I have sent and found one that was a new version ? if you do will see that ALL of my updates are a patched mga 1 version. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Hi Juan Luis, On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. But then you're *not* doing as the policy says, as policy says: same version of the package *released with the distribution* So whatever version that ended up in the initial release of the distro. Not what is available upstream. Were do you get that ? have you even went through the updates I have sent and found one that was a new version ? if you do will see that ALL of my updates are a patched mga 1 version. You should learn to use unambiguous words then. Where I get that from is in this quote: No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. To me current stable version = whatever is available upstream as the current stable version (=bugfixrelease) of the codeline that is in the distro. If distro has shipped 1.3.2 initially, and 1.3.4 is available in the meantime, then current stable is 1.3.4 in my world, not 1.3.2. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: You should learn to use unambiguous words then. Where I get that from is in this quote: No, I'm doing exactly as the policy says, patch current stable version. Ahh ok, I meant current stable version in Mageia, I thought that was implicit :P -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Hi Florian, On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier: [..] PS: Maybe next time you could improve on your wording, the policy may currently be incorrect, not reflecting good packaging practices, but as it's only a policy written by humans, it's not dumb. Just a hint. ;) No, I disagree. The policy as written is dumb in my opinion. But that doesn't mean I consider the people who edited the wiki to be dumb. That is a huge difference in my opinion. If I tell someone Ugh, that's an ugly shirt you're wearing today it is not the same as telling the person you are ugly - but people on this list do get it that way. If you publish a policy, and the policy is incorrect, the whole process of using policies is worthless. So I /have/ to assume that the policy reflects the decisions/conclusions from the discussions by people running the project. To me it stays a silly/stupid policy. Whether you like the word or not. It is not picking about typos or bad grammar or anything. It is the fundamental approach reflected by the policy that I consider so wrong that in my eyes it is stupid (and reason enough not to consider officially packing stuff for Mageia). I for myself prefer that people state what they really think, instead of being sarcastic or trying to be smart in other ways (what point is Johnny trying to make with his hear, hear for example?) . This just doesn't work when you don't have other info than the text on your screen (no facial expression, no tone of voice, ~no background knowledge on the person making the statement). It might be my lack of understanding the English language, but stupid just is a regular word - it is not like I'd be using something like moth.*ker here. Also my thesaurus only lists words that I consider more harsh (like retarded, brainless,...). So once again sorry if that did offend some people, feel free to suggest (via pm, no need to continue this on the list) a wording that still carries the same meaning, but is less insulting. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 21:25, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier: [..] PS: Maybe next time you could improve on your wording, the policy may currently be incorrect, not reflecting good packaging practices, but as it's only a policy written by humans, it's not dumb. Just a hint. ;) No, I disagree. The policy as written is dumb in my opinion. But that doesn't mean I consider the people who edited the wiki to be dumb. That is a huge difference in my opinion. If I tell someone Ugh, that's an ugly shirt you're wearing today it is not the same as telling the person you are ugly - but people on this list do get it that way. Agreed. Still, let's cut it short and to the point. Can someone rewrite it as it should be then (adding the missing exception if I understood correctly)? By the same time, could the document be written short and straightforward: - start the document with the very policy (at this time, it's in the 3rd sub-section); - write it in a more assertive way (not should do but does); - all other subsections should be there to explain status, context, roles, etc. It might be my lack of understanding the English language, but stupid just is a regular word - it is not like I'd be using something like moth.*ker here. Also my thesaurus only lists words that I consider more harsh (like retarded, brainless,...). You could have said misleading, deceptive, heartbreaking, disheartening, expectations breaking, amusingly inaccurate or unusual. The fact is that this policy document starts with a warning that it is a first pass - so it may be improved. In short: let's behave a bit more like gentlemen this year, shall we? :)
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Florian, On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier: [..] PS: Maybe next time you could improve on your wording, the policy may currently be incorrect, not reflecting good packaging practices, but as it's only a policy written by humans, it's not dumb. Just a hint. ;) No, I disagree. The policy as written is dumb in my opinion. But that doesn't mean I consider the people who edited the wiki to be dumb. That is a huge difference in my opinion. If I tell someone Ugh, that's an ugly shirt you're wearing today it is not the same as telling the person you are ugly - but people on this list do get it that way. Continuing with your example, yes, you aren't telling them that they're ugly, you are telling them that they have bad taste, and for some that can be insulting and for others not. You could have made your point by saying that *you* don't like that t-shirt because of x and y motives and if he had chosen another one with Y characteristics would look much better on him. Do you see the difference on wording ? you are expressing the same idea but in a more polite way. The same applies here. Your point about the problem in the policy is totally valid and needs to be addressed, but the way you expressed it is not, no matter you if you think it was. If it was, then no one had felt insulted on the first place ;) -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: [...] You could have made your point by saying that *you* don't like that t-shirt because of x and y motives and if he had chosen another one with Y characteristics would look much better on him. If you reread my posts, you'll notice that whenever I called it stupid, a in my opinion or equivalent is just around the corner. And you'll also see that I also wrote what I consider the better alternative (I wrote it so often that people surely are annoyed by now) ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Am 11.01.2012 08:57, schrieb Buchan Milne: On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 06:32:50 Johnny A. Solbu wrote: On Wednesday 11 January 2012 03:28, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz wrote: I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. May I suggest that next time, say it in so many words. Some of us are not good at reading between the lines, and your original post was written in a way that indicated that it was not clear on that you where talking about just what you said you where talking about in your last post. :-)= And I agree with you. Updating packages in a released product just because a new version is out is not a valid reason by itself. If on the other hand it fixes some bugs or security holes, it's worth considering. Resolving the backports situation would however provide a means for users who want to track upstream (for various reasons, such as being able to get support from upstreams who don't really want to support 'historic' releases) without: 1)Forcing all users to get the update 2)Requiring excessive QA work 3)Requiring bug reports for each update Well, 2) and 3) are not valid reasons here, because backports should get a similar amount of QA testing as normal update candidates, and for the updates policy require a bugreport for validation through QA. Check https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Backports_policy#Steps and https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy Regards, Buchan
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:28:15 -0600 Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz dlu...@okay.com.mx wrote: You dont get me, I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. Uh. As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro. For example, it would be nice if an up-to-date Mageia 1 system had Python 2.7.2 rather than Python 2.7.1 (not a deal-breaker, of course, but nice). There's more than a hundred bug fixes between the two versions and I don't expect Mageia to have independently fixed many of these bugs. If you think shipping bugfixes isn't part of the QA for a stable version then I'm not sure what said QA should be (apart from updating Firefox to new major versions that is :-)). Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Well, 2) and 3) are not valid reasons here, because backports should get a similar amount of QA testing as normal update candidates, and for the updates policy require a bugreport for validation through QA. I think this is unrealistic in practice. For updates, QA will be testing one bug fix, with a backport you will have dozens or more new features to test, you can't expect for QA to test all of them to be able to give the OK, more if they even don't use the backported app in a daily basis. Testing of a backport has to be more relaxed and compromise to test some basic stuff like that it installs and starts correctly, maybe the package maintainer can give some hints on what else to test, but the rest we will have to trust in the maintainer's judgement. If you think that all version backports should be tested in the same way as updates by QA, then all versions upgrades in cauldron should be tested by QA before pushing them to the BS right ? why risk for a bug on a program when updating to a new mga version and not when doing a backport ?, it's exactly the same situation. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:51:55 +0100 Guillaume Rousse guillomovi...@gmail.com wrote: Le 11/01/2012 16:09, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro. You'd rather read the current update policy, rather than expect blind assertions: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy Thanks. For example, it would be nice if an up-to-date Mageia 1 system had Python 2.7.2 rather than Python 2.7.1 (not a deal-breaker, of course, but nice). There's more than a hundred bug fixes between the two versions and I don't expect Mageia to have independently fixed many of these bugs. A bug may vary from a typo in a man page to a critical security update, which make the number of claimed bugfix a poor decision metric. A non-regression ensurance would be a better one, but it's quite difficult to assert. As both an user and an upstream developer, I would not expect a Mageia packager to know better than the upstream developers what can constitute a regression, and what is a good compromise to fix or not. At least for well-maintained upstream projects, that is :-) Welcome to our new QA team volonteer :) Agreed that my advice would be more constructive if I got involved, but I don't have the time for that. Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: Welcome to distro-isolation, putting burden on maintainers, giving them all the reason to deny a reasonable request for a bugfix release because it just is too much work to hunt for a specific commit that fixed bug x. You don't do packaging, right ? it isn't that hard and is how all distro's do it. Look at Fedora or SuSE's packages and you will see a lot of patch files fixing single bugs. It's a matter of following upstream bugzilla reports and see which commit fixes the issue in question, create a patch from it and apply it to the package. Most of the time you can get the patches to fix single bugs from other distros packages. If there's a bugfix-only release it's better as it will be easier to update, but many times they aren't and include new features which could introduce regressions so we have to cherry pick those fixes. Also many times there isn't a new release from upstream so the only option we have is to backport a single fix. A bug may vary from a typo in a man page to a critical security update, And a typo-fix is not worthwhile to have? I think that what was meant here is that there are priorities for QA, where a security update is much more important and deserves more attention than a typo-fix. Of course, you are welcome to join the QA team to help them test those not so critical fixes if you really care that much about them. Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the regressions? Because as I said earlier, we backport the commit that fixes that single issue, based on the info found on the bugzilla report of the upstream project. Also as you say most of the times upstream is not a bunch of clueless idiots so they will document very well each commit, making it easier for us to find those fixes. Cheers, -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the regressions? Because as I said earlier, we backport the commit that fixes that single issue, based on the info found on the bugzilla report of the upstream project. But how do you choose which patches you want to backport from the stream of bugfixes done by upstream? Should the packager monitor all bug fixing activity? (sure (s)he *can*, but that's a lot of work) Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker. (also, other users don't bother reporting bugs at all :-)) Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500 But how do you choose which patches you want to backport from the stream of bugfixes done by upstream? Because normally a single commit fixes a single bug and the commit message says it clearly, so it's easy to spot the fixes. Should the packager monitor all bug fixing activity? (sure (s)he *can*, but that's a lot of work) No we don't need to, we just need to look for the fix we are interested in as I described before. Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker. (also, other users don't bother reporting bugs at all :-)) Don't think that when we get a bug report in mga bugzilla is because only mga users are affected ;) most of the time there's already an upstream bug report so we start following it and give any useful information we have about it. If it isn't we create it and follow it. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 11:24 -0500, Juan Luis Baptiste a écrit : On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Florian Hubold doktor5...@arcor.de wrote: Well, 2) and 3) are not valid reasons here, because backports should get a similar amount of QA testing as normal update candidates, and for the updates policy require a bugreport for validation through QA. I think this is unrealistic in practice. For updates, QA will be testing one bug fix, with a backport you will have dozens or more new features to test, you can't expect for QA to test all of them to be able to give the OK, more if they even don't use the backported app in a daily basis. Testing of a backport has to be more relaxed and compromise to test some basic stuff like that it installs and starts correctly, maybe the package maintainer can give some hints on what else to test, but the rest we will have to trust in the maintainer's judgement. So trusting and having bugs are totally unrelated. And if you doubt that bugs appear, just see our bugzilla. We trust upstream ( most of them ), and yet there is bugs. If you think that all version backports should be tested in the same way as updates by QA, then all versions upgrades in cauldron should be tested by QA before pushing them to the BS right ? No, they should be tested before being put in the stable release. And that's exactly what we do by freezing and testing before release. why risk for a bug on a program when updating to a new mga version and not when doing a backport ?, it's exactly the same situation. That was already extensively discussed in the past, but if we do the same stuff than in Mandriva, we will end with the same result than in Mandriva. - people don't test backports, because that's not mandatory = some bugs slips. then users start to say do not use backport if you do not know what you do or if you are not expert, because I had $problem once. With time, such advice start to impermeate the community, and people start to simply not use backports. Worst, some people just do cherry picking of backports, and take one or two or them, and this result in wierd bugs with 2 effects : - we lose time - user think we are doing a bad quality distribution, because he has a mix that he is the only one in the world to have. Non technical users tell him he should not mix ( and they are right ), and so he start to feel bad because we gave him something that do not ork. Some users also end with system unsupported, so no security update, nor bugfixes. In the end, users complain that distribution is broken, and that impact our image. We cannot tell do not mix, because we cannot tell them to update backports without fear, as that would be lying. And in the end, saying this is not supported, but we offer to you is just sending a confusing message. If we start to give low quality stuff as Mageia, people will just think Mageia is low quality. -- Michael Scherer
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:33:41 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500 But how do you choose which patches you want to backport from the stream of bugfixes done by upstream? Because normally a single commit fixes a single bug and the commit message says it clearly, so it's easy to spot the fixes. Should the packager monitor all bug fixing activity? (sure (s)he *can*, but that's a lot of work) No we don't need to, we just need to look for the fix we are interested in as I described before. Uh, you have a hard time understanding a question don't you? I specifically asked *how* you come to be interested in a particular fix, rather than all of them. So, again, do you monitor all commits or is there another heuristic you apply to avoid that O(n) process? Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 17:48 +0100, Christian Lohmaier a écrit : On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse guillomovi...@gmail.com wrote: Le 11/01/2012 16:09, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro. You'd rather read the current update policy, rather than expect blind assertions: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy Whoa - this is a rather stupid policy. (my opinion, yours obviously differs). For the most part, an update should consist of a boldpatched build of the same version/bold of the package released with the distribution, I am pretty sure that you can express yourself without starting by insulting people. That would surely help to be listened ( cause right now, I must tell that I am not very keen on that ) Welcome to distro-isolation, putting burden on maintainers, giving them all the reason to deny a reasonable request for a bugfix release because it just is too much work to hunt for a specific commit that fixed bug x. If that's too much work for a maintainer and if that's important for you, you can : - do your own package, supported by yourself for yourself or : - provide the patch If that's too much work for you too, then that's likely too much work for others too. For example, it would be nice if an up-to-date Mageia 1 system had Python 2.7.2 rather than Python 2.7.1 (not a deal-breaker, of course, but nice). There's more than a hundred bug fixes between the two versions and I don't expect Mageia to have independently fixed many of these bugs. A bug may vary from a typo in a man page to a critical security update, And a typo-fix is not worthwhile to have? When we take in account the fact it would still need proper QA, there is likely stuff that are more important than a typo. And a typo is just a extreme case, and a simplificaition. If we start to have a complex update policy, we are just losing time for almost nothing. which make the number of claimed bugfix a poor decision metric. A non-regression ensurance would be a better one, but it's quite difficult to assert. Don't assume all upstream projects are a bunch of clueless idiots. We didn't say that. We just assume that errors happen to everybody. For upstream releases that have a clear version/release scheme, with micro releases being compatible bugfixes only, the above mentioned policy is completely nonsense, same for your fear of regressions, etc. Regressions do happens. Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the regressions? For 1, we usually do not do distro patch. I personnaly think this should be avoided as much as possible, and that we should push as much patch upstream. We have a rather huge backlog to clean. For 2, we also usually take patch from upstream. Some of us are also good enough to understand patchs, and to see what they mean, if they fix something, etc. Of course, there is some software that are rather specialized or obscure, but that's far from being the majority. Regressions have the nice habit of being triggered by changes in apparently unrelated code... And that's why we should reduce the number of changes. My 0.02€ only, but I strongly suggest for that update policy to be clarified. When there is no dedicated bugfix release procedure in the upstream package, an update is a rebuild of the same version with a corresponding patch. That's reasonable (as opposed to using a newer minor or even major release, those are backports). But once again: if upstream has a major.minor.micro scheme with micro versions being bugfix releases, I really don't see any sane reason for not allowing those updates. Maybe if you started to be less insulting, and instead started to look at the discussion on the ml in the past on the list, when the policy was discussed ( and access to the old wiki too ), you would likely find the reasons saner. -- Michael Scherer
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wednesday 11 January 2012 19:33, Juan Luis Baptiste wrote: Should the packager monitor all bug fixing activity? No we don't need to, we just need to look for the fix we are interested in as I described before. And how do one do that without monitoring most bugfixing activity or reviewing them, hunting for a particular fix? To some people, that magic trick is not obvious. -- Johnny A. Solbu PGP key ID: 0xFA687324 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:33:41 -0500 No we don't need to, we just need to look for the fix we are interested in as I described before. Uh, you have a hard time understanding a question don't you? And you a hard time understanding an answer, don't you ? pfff... I specifically asked *how* you come to be interested in a particular fix, rather than all of them. As I said, when there's a bug report on mga, we start investigating the problem and go and look at upstream for a bug report there for *that* particular bug. Then, when we see it fixed we go to the control versioning system ang create a patch from the commit that fixed *that* bug according to the upstream report and apply it to the mga package, what isn't clear about that ? So, again, do you monitor all commits or is there another heuristic you apply to avoid that O(n) process? Again, read with attention what I said before and on this answer. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Johnny A. Solbu coo...@solbu.net wrote: On Wednesday 11 January 2012 19:33, Juan Luis Baptiste wrote: And how do one do that without monitoring most bugfixing activity or reviewing them, hunting for a particular fix? To some people, that magic trick is not obvious. As I said before, the upstream bug report will tell you which commit fixed the bug, so you go ahead and get that particular revision and create a patch to apply to the packages, there's no need to monitor *all* bugfixing activity, you just look for what you need when you need to. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 16:09 +0100, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:28:15 -0600 Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz dlu...@okay.com.mx wrote: You dont get me, I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. Uh. As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro. For example, it would be nice if an up-to-date Mageia 1 system had Python 2.7.2 rather than Python 2.7.1 (not a deal-breaker, of course, but nice). There's more than a hundred bug fixes between the two versions and I don't expect Mageia to have independently fixed many of these bugs. If you think shipping bugfixes isn't part of the QA for a stable version then I'm not sure what said QA should be (apart from updating Firefox to new major versions that is :-)). The policy ( as I remember when we discussed on this ml ) would allow to ship it, the specific case that I had in mind was postgresql, because it has a strict policy on backporting fixes, and regression testing, but python would fit too. However, my current workload and priority list do not place doing a python update on the top of the list. As you say, that's not a deal breaker, so I prefer to focus on what would be more important or urgent ( like for example, fixing servers and broken raid array ). -- Michael Scherer
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 19:22:23, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker. (also, other users don't bother reporting bugs at all :-)) That's it. This is why we provide the whole bugfix release from upstream as update when it is a PURE BUGFIX release (no new features). Backports are here for releases with new features.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:41:54 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: As I said, when there's a bug report on mga, we start investigating the problem and go and look at upstream for a bug report there for *that* particular bug. So let me repeat myself from two messages above (!): “Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Michael Scherer m...@zarb.org wrote: Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 11:24 -0500, Juan Luis Baptiste a écrit : So trusting and having bugs are totally unrelated. And if you doubt that bugs appear, just see our bugzilla. We trust upstream ( most of them ), and yet there is bugs. No, they're not totally unrelated when we don't have the man power to do through QA on every package, we need to trust on the packager (and upstream of course) that he did his best to test the new version without expecting him to have tested all the new features, Or do you expect that a QA member get a list of all the new features of a backport and start testing them one by one ? that's what I call unrealistic in practice. If you think that all version backports should be tested in the same way as updates by QA, then all versions upgrades in cauldron should be tested by QA before pushing them to the BS right ? No, they should be tested before being put in the stable release. And that's exactly what we do by freezing and testing before release. Of course but again, we can't test *all* the new features of *all* the programs that are going to a new release, we do our best for most of them. Critical components like installer, kernel, drak* tools, etc need more testing and that's where (our very small team) QA should spend their time after a freeze. The rest we have to do our best to test after each version update of a package. why risk for a bug on a program when updating to a new mga version and not when doing a backport ?, it's exactly the same situation. That was already extensively discussed in the past, but if we do the same stuff than in Mandriva, we will end with the same result than in Mandriva. - people don't test backports, because that's not mandatory = some bugs slips. Of course and that will also happen when updating packages during the development cycle of cauldron. Yes, we do freeze to be able to test, but we cant test every new feature of all applications. We test the most critical stuff which we can't risk to have bugs (and they also slip some times). In the end, users complain that distribution is broken, and that impact our image. We cannot tell do not mix, because we cannot tell them to update backports without fear, as that would be lying. And in the end, saying this is not supported, but we offer to you is just sending a confusing message. If we start to give low quality stuff as Mageia, people will just think Mageia is low quality. Users will complain anyway, they will complain because there aren't backports of their favorite application or because a backported version has a bug, so we need to find a balance between those two. Expecting to do the same amount of testing to a backport will put too much burden on QA and will make the process of backporting a version too slow for the users. So we need to have more lax tests for backports, enough to guarantee that the application works for it's main features and doesn't put too much burnden on QA, than for updates which need to gurantee that a bug is really fixed. How to define which should be those tests ? that's the issue as I see it. We could have a backports team thought, that would do QA for backports without taking time from the updates QA team... Also the other problem is the third-party repos which brings lots of problems because packages are of low quality and don't follow our standards, and if we don't have our own backports and move fast enough users will continue to use those third-party repos, which will also bring the Mageia is of low quality problem. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: “Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Simple, we won't fix bugs that aren't reported or noticed by us, that's unrealistic, someone needs to bring the attention to us if they want it to be fixed. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:13:05 -0500 Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: “Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker.” Simple, we won't fix bugs that aren't reported or noticed by us, that's unrealistic, someone needs to bring the attention to us if they want it to be fixed. And my point is that these bugs are fixed automatically if you follow bugfix releases from upstream... Apparently you like to create work for yourself, though :) Regards Antoine.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste juan...@mageia.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: [...] You don't do packaging, right ? Wrong. I do packaging, although not for any distro. it isn't that hard and is how all distro's do it. Look at Fedora or SuSE's packages and you will see a lot of patch files fixing single bugs. adding patches to the packages and releasing them instead of waiting for a new upstream release is different from having the policy to stick with whatever release was used when releasing the distro and then only apply fixes via patches. I'm not saying that you must not use patches to fix bugs. There are cases where a bug is homegrown/specific to the distro and thus not suitable for fixing upstream, there are cases where development cylce is too slow/it is not sensible to wait for upstream. It's a matter of following upstream bugzilla reports and see which commit fixes the issue in question, create a patch from it and apply it to the package. Most of the time you can get the patches to fix single bugs from other distros packages. It is not a question whether it is possible. It is a question whether it makes sense in the first place. And no doubt it creates a lot more work for package maintainers. Both for initially hunting for the commit that fixes the bug, and later when patches conflict, and later when a package is updated to a new release. Because as I said earlier, we backport the commit that fixes that single issue, Every change, also those that introduce a regression is a commit. So implicitly you're saying that you will only fix the easy bugs, but anything that involves more than touching 10lines of code will not be chosen, since it might introduce regressions. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:56 PM, zezinho lists.jjo...@free.fr wrote: Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 19:22:23, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : Just because someone doesn't file a bug against Mageia doesn't mean the bug doesn't bother anybody, because many users don't report upstream bugs to the distro's tracker. (also, other users don't bother reporting bugs at all :-)) That's it. This is why we provide the whole bugfix release from upstream as update when it is a PURE BUGFIX release (no new features). This would be sane, but this is not what is written in the update policy wiki page. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Michael Scherer m...@zarb.org wrote: Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 17:48 +0100, Christian Lohmaier a écrit : On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse guillomovi...@gmail.com wrote: Le 11/01/2012 16:09, Antoine Pitrou a écrit : As a Mageia user I would expect Mageia to package significant *bugfix releases* and ship them in the updates for the stable distro. You'd rather read the current update policy, rather than expect blind assertions: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Updates_policy Whoa - this is a rather stupid policy. (my opinion, yours obviously differs). For the most part, an update should consist of a boldpatched build of the same version/bold of the package released with the distribution, I am pretty sure that you can express yourself without starting by insulting people. Well, if you feel insulted when I state my personal opinion about the policy, then I cannot help it. I also find a different word for it - In my opinion it is a stupid policy. It might not reflect what was discussed on the mailinglist, but that is not my fault either - I can only judge what is written on that wiki-page, and once again: that policy doesn't make any sense to me. Feeling insulted means that you apparently were deeply involved in formulating the policy, too bad, but cannot be helped. Sorry if your feelings are hurt. Welcome to distro-isolation, putting burden on maintainers, giving them all the reason to deny a reasonable request for a bugfix release because it just is too much work to hunt for a specific commit that fixed bug x. If that's too much work for a maintainer and if that's important for you, you can : - do your own package, supported by yourself for yourself I do for the packages I care of. or : - provide the patch No, that's pointless. I'd rather supply the patch upstream, so it will be integrated in the upstream package. If that's too much work for you too, then that's likely too much work for others too. You're mixing stuff around: We/I am talking about the case when there *is* an bugfix release available from upstream, but the policy dictates to extract individual patches for a subset of the fixes only- and that subset being bugs filed in mageia's bugzilla. This doesn't make sense. If the maintainer could use the fixed upstream release, then all that is needed is to bumb the version-tag in the spec and rebuild. You don't question that this is easier than hunting down a patch and adding that to the package, do you? Any cases where just bumping the version and rebuilding won't work are cases that don't fall in the bugfix-only category. [...] A bug may vary from a typo in a man page to a critical security update, And a typo-fix is not worthwhile to have? When we take in account the fact it would still need proper QA, there is likely stuff that are more important than a typo. And a typo is just a extreme case, and a simplificaition. If we start to have a complex update policy, we are just losing time for almost nothing. No doubt about that - the above statement was more meant in the terms of only applying selective fixes by patch, as opposed to taking the release that has those bugs fixed+additional easy stuff. So why only fix bug that is reported in mageia's bugzilla, but not the typo that was fixed upstream. Sure, you cannot be save of regressions, but what makes you think you are smarter than upstream? What makes you so sure that not the one commit you add as a patch to your package is the one that causes the regressions? For 1, we usually do not do distro patch. I personnaly think this should be avoided as much as possible, and that we should push as much patch upstream. We have a rather huge backlog to clean. For 2, we also usually take patch from upstream. Some of us are also good enough to understand patchs, and to see what they mean, if they fix something, etc. Of course, there is some software that are rather specialized or obscure, but that's far from being the majority. So then again: what makes selectively fixing bugs better in terms of regression prevention than applying a bugfix release from upstream? You an Juan Luis basically say: Less changes, less chance for breakage. This is a Milchmädchenrechnung (naive assessment of the situation). Fixed done by upstream are applied by people familiar with the code in question, usually way more familiar than the package maintainer. Yes the regressions do happen. Even if a fix looks simple, it can introduce a regression. And by only selectively applying patches it means that: You might have a lesser chance of regressions, but instead of the regressions you still have the other regular bugs that were fixed. Regressions have the nice habit of being triggered by changes in apparently unrelated code... And that's why we should reduce the number of changes. That's why reducing the number of changes won't help. Maybe if you started to be
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Antoine Pitrou solip...@pitrou.net wrote: And my point is that these bugs are fixed automatically if you follow bugfix releases from upstream... Apparently you like to create work for yourself, though :) No, it seems that you like to read what you like to read, On this thread has been clear that if there's a bugfix *only* release then we will update to that version, *but* when it isn't then we *can't* update to it, and we'll have to cherry pick fixes as I have described, according to the reported bugs. That's how we and any distro does it. -- Juancho
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Christian Lohmaier lohmaier+mag...@googlemail.com wrote: adding patches to the packages and releasing them instead of waiting for a new upstream release is different from having the policy to stick with whatever release was used when releasing the distro and then only apply fixes via patches. Some times you can't wait for an upstream release, think for example of a security update. Also not all projects do bugfix only releases, but include new features as well so per our policy, we can't update to that version and that's when we have to cherry pick updates to apply to package in the stable version of mga. The problem seems to be that that isn't clear on the policy. I'm not saying that you must not use patches to fix bugs. There are cases where a bug is homegrown/specific to the distro and thus not suitable for fixing upstream, there are cases where development cylce is too slow/it is not sensible to wait for upstream. Exactly, plus the other case I just said. It is not a question whether it is possible. It is a question whether it makes sense in the first place. And no doubt it creates a lot more work for package maintainers. Both for initially hunting for the commit that fixes the bug, and later when patches conflict, and later when a package is updated to a new release. As I said, no one is talking about picking up a fix if there's a bug fix only release, it's for when it isn't and we need to reduce the chance of regressions by taking the modifications that *exactly* fix that bug. Because as I said earlier, we backport the commit that fixes that single issue, Every change, also those that introduce a regression is a commit. So implicitly you're saying that you will only fix the easy bugs, but anything that involves more than touching 10lines of code will not be chosen, since it might introduce regressions. No, I'm saying that we will look for the commit that fixes the issue in question and not anything else, it doesn't matter if the fix is one, 10, 50 lines and/or touches 1, 2 or 10 files. And again, if there's a bugfix *only* release available when we are working on a bug, or we know that there will be one soon, then we can update to that version. In the other cases we have to go the long route and patch the packges with individual fixes. -- Juancho
[Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
AS i understand we are not a rolling distribution, so i dont get why i'm getting tickets to update release. What I mean, if you consider an update, like the one i did squid 3.1.12 to 3.1.15 please explain why. Otherwhise i gues it is better you cand use Mageia cauldron SRPM and do backport for your self. LD
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Hi Luis, *, On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz dlu...@okay.com.mx wrote: AS i understand we are not a rolling distribution, so i dont get why i'm getting tickets to update release. What I mean, if you consider an update, like the one i did squid 3.1.12 to 3.1.15 please explain why. No knowing squid's release-numbering-scheme, but update in micro version usually are (fully compatible) bugfix releases, so why is an explanation necessary? The explanation is fixed bugs And using a fixed upstream release surely is preferable over adding patches manually, isn't it? Otherwhise i gues it is better you cand use Mageia cauldron SRPM and do backport for your self. I understand a backport as adding a version with new features, usually signalled by an update in either major or minor version. Those might come with break in backwards or forwad-compatibility, so giving clear reason why it should be backported surely is justified. The lower in the stack (the more other packages depend on the package in question), the more thought needs to be put into it. But if a package that no other package depends on is concerned, then I'd say it is up to the packager to decide whether he/she will go through the trouble of backporting it. If the spec is well written, and configuring the package is sane, then it is easy, if it is a hacked-together spec/build-system it is hard. But bugfixreleases (i.e. just micro version changed for most package versioning schemes) should just consist of updating the source-tarball (and maybe dropping some patches that found their way upstream and rediff the remaining ones) and I don't understand your request to stop those requests. ciao Christian
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le 10/01/2012 19:12, Christian Lohmaier a écrit : And using a fixed upstream release surely is preferable over adding patches manually, isn't it? No. Adding bugfix-specific patches ensure you just fix specific issues, whereas updating software version usually doesn't offer any kind of garanty against behavior changes. -- BOFH excuse #424: operation failed because: there is no message for this error (#1014)
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
Le mardi 10 janvier 2012 19:12:29 Christian Lohmaier a écrit : Hi Luis, *, On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz dlu...@okay.com.mx wrote: AS i understand we are not a rolling distribution, so i dont get why i'm getting tickets to update release. What I mean, if you consider an update, like the one i did squid 3.1.12 to 3.1.15 please explain why. No knowing squid's release-numbering-scheme, but update in micro version usually are (fully compatible) bugfix releases, so why is an explanation necessary? The explanation is fixed bugs And using a fixed upstream release surely is preferable over adding patches manually, isn't it? Otherwhise i gues it is better you cand use Mageia cauldron SRPM and do backport for your self. I understand a backport as adding a version with new features, usually signalled by an update in either major or minor version. Those might come with break in backwards or forwad-compatibility, so giving clear reason why it should be backported surely is justified. The lower in the stack (the more other packages depend on the package in question), the more thought needs to be put into it. But if a package that no other package depends on is concerned, then I'd say it is up to the packager to decide whether he/she will go through the trouble of backporting it. If the spec is well written, and configuring the package is sane, then it is easy, if it is a hacked-together spec/build-system it is hard. But bugfixreleases (i.e. just micro version changed for most package versioning schemes) should just consist of updating the source-tarball (and maybe dropping some patches that found their way upstream and rediff the remaining ones) and I don't understand your request to stop those requests. ciao Christian Email Shield provided by NOCWorldWide.com You dont get me, I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. LD
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wednesday 11 January 2012 03:28, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz wrote: I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. May I suggest that next time, say it in so many words. Some of us are not good at reading between the lines, and your original post was written in a way that indicated that it was not clear on that you where talking about just what you said you where talking about in your last post. :-)= And I agree with you. Updating packages in a released product just because a new version is out is not a valid reason by itself. If on the other hand it fixes some bugs or security holes, it's worth considering. -- Johnny A. Solbu PGP key ID: 0xFA687324 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [Mageia-dev] please stop doing bugs for updating magia 1
On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 06:32:50 Johnny A. Solbu wrote: On Wednesday 11 January 2012 03:28, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz wrote: I mean, stop asking updates for mageia 1 just because there is another newversion. May I suggest that next time, say it in so many words. Some of us are not good at reading between the lines, and your original post was written in a way that indicated that it was not clear on that you where talking about just what you said you where talking about in your last post. :-)= And I agree with you. Updating packages in a released product just because a new version is out is not a valid reason by itself. If on the other hand it fixes some bugs or security holes, it's worth considering. Resolving the backports situation would however provide a means for users who want to track upstream (for various reasons, such as being able to get support from upstreams who don't really want to support 'historic' releases) without: 1)Forcing all users to get the update 2)Requiring excessive QA work 3)Requiring bug reports for each update Regards, Buchan
