Greetings, and thank you all so much for your usual fantastic work on Debian!
I just wanted to make a few observations about the recent decision to scrap m68k from etch: 1) The 4.x C compiler and hppa and apparently arm are currently much worse. 2) kernel and/or libc bugs preventing any profiling program from invoking 'system' persist on mips(el) and hppa 3) alpha apparently has a kernel or other bug that corrupts denormalized numbers when passed as function arguments. 4) For a significant amount of time after the security compromise, we still have no standard ssh access to Debian alpha and arm machines for the purposes of fixing bugs. I've had to rely on friends/accounts on other machines to fill in here. 5) Code which I had which compiled on all 11 sarge arches was summarily thrown out of testing apparently due to its failure to compile under new buggy gcc on some of these machines. If we are looking for a fair standard, I would suggest that an arch would have at least to compile what it did in the previous release to be a candidate for the next, and that until it does, it should not cause the ejection of code which had not changed from the prior release. 6) the m68k people have always been incredibly helpful and responsive, while it is quite difficult to get replies concerning several of the other arches, at least for me. 7) Perhaps we should consider the balance between making debian just another glitzy quick-release plaything for mass consumption and minimal user contribution, and a system designed to give users who care and contribute the flexibility and power to do their work which so greatly benefits us all. These are just my thoughts. I've been a Debian developer for over ten years, but recognize that I don't have as much information on these issues as others in the project. I will of course continue to support whatever course the Debian organizational structure feels is best in this regard. Take care, -- Camm Maguire [EMAIL PROTECTED] ========================================================================== "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
