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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 10:28 AM, andre999  wrote:
> Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste
>>  wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier
>>>   wrote:
 On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste
  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

[andre999]

Christian Lohmaier a écrit :

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  wrote:
   

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier
  wrote:
 

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  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

[Buchan Milne]

On Thursday, 12 January 2012 22:25:51 Christian Lohmaier wrote:
> Hi Florian,
> 
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold  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]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Lohmaier
>  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Lohmaier
 wrote:
> Hi Florian,
>
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold  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

[Romain d'Alverny]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 21:25, Christian Lohmaier
 wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold  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

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Florian,

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Florian Hubold  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Christian Lohmaier
 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

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Juan Luis,

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Christian Lohmaier
>  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Christian Lohmaier
 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

[Florian Hubold]

Am 12.01.2012 19:01, schrieb Christian Lohmaier:
> Hi Juan Luis,
>
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  
> 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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier
>  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  
>> 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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Christian Lohmaier
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  
> 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

[Johnny A. Solbu]

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


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Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

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

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Juan Luis,

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  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

[Buchan Milne]

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

[Johnny A. Solbu]

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

[andre999]

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 Scherer  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

[Buchan Milne]

On Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:27:59 Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:05:34 +0200
> 
> Buchan Milne  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

[Guillaume Rousse]

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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:05:34 +0200
Buchan Milne  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

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 22:05:53 Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:41:54 -0500
> Juan Luis Baptiste 
> 
> 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

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 22:10:01 Juan Luis Baptiste wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Michael Scherer  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

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

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 21:56:44 zezinho wrote:

> Backports are here for releases with new features.

Where?

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

[Buchan Milne]

On Wednesday, 11 January 2012 20:22:23 Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500
> Juan Luis Baptiste 
> 
> 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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Christian Lohmaier
 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

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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Michael Scherer  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
>>  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 patched build
>> of the same version 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 th

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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 8:56 PM, zezinho  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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Juan Luis Baptiste  wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Christian Lohmaier
>  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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:13:05 -0500
Juan Luis Baptiste 
wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Michael Scherer  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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:41:54 -0500
Juan Luis Baptiste 
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

[zezinho]

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

[Michael Scherer]

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
>  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Johnny A. Solbu  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Johnny A. Solbu]

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


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Description: This is a digitally signed message part.

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

[Michael Scherer]

Le mercredi 11 janvier 2012 à 17:48 +0100, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse
>  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 patched build
> of the same version 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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:33:41 -0500
Juan Luis Baptiste 
wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Michael Scherer]

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  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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Antoine Pitrou  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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:43:35 -0500
Juan Luis Baptiste 
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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Christian Lohmaier
 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

[Pascal Terjan]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 16:48, Christian Lohmaier
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse
>  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 patched build
> of the same version of the package released with the
> distribution,"
>
> 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.
>
>>> 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?
>
>> 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.

Don't assume the opposite either, it really depend on each project.

> 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.

Yes, bugfix only release have always been accepted, this should be
added to the exceptions on the wiki.

> 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 the most changes you had, the most likely a regression is

> Regressions have the nice habit of being triggered by changes in
> apparently unrelated code...
>
> 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.

Yes, they are actually allowed.

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

[Christian Lohmaier]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Guillaume Rousse
 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 patched build
of the same version of the package released with the
distribution,"

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.

>> 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?

> 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.

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.

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?

Regressions have the nice habit of being triggered by changes in
apparently unrelated code...

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.

ciao
Christian

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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:51:55 +0100
Guillaume Rousse
 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

[Juan Luis Baptiste]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:43 AM, Florian Hubold  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

[Guillaume Rousse]

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


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.



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 :-)).

Welcome to our new QA team volonteer :)

--
BOFH excuse #368:

Failure to adjust for daylight savings time.

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

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:28:15 -0600
Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz
 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

[Florian Hubold]

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

[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

Regards,
Buchan

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

[Johnny A. Solbu]

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

[Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz]

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
> 
>  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

[Guillaume Rousse]

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

[Christian Lohmaier]

Hi Luis, *,

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Luis Daniel Lucio Quiroz
 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