On Mon, Feb 28, 2005 at 12:54:46AM -0300, Lucas Wall wrote: > The core idea of dehs (as I understand it) is to keep track of > differences between the current upstream and Debian package versions. In > the long run dehs is intended to gather and present more information > than just the numerical version difference. Upstream changelog > fragments, bug reports or NEWS, can be easily inspected (in one place) > to check what upstream has done and is not yet available in a Debian > package.
This is a rather blue sky goal, given how much of a mixed bag upstream changelogs are... Doesn't seem to justify making a fuss over getting watch files into all packages, when there are so many real, reported, user-affecting bugs outstanding? > The system can also be used spot MIA developers, No, it can't: neither package out-of-dateness nor infrequency of upload is a criterion for being considered MIA, nor should they be. This is simply not a good indicator of whether the package is being well-maintained. > long forgotten package, etc. Can't you tell that much more easily by looking at the datestamp of the most recent upload, instead of trying to get maintainers who may already be MIA to add files to their packages before you can get any statistics? > Should people care about this? Well... People should care if the > packages lag behind upstream. Why? > Good maintainers will care and will build a new package when upstream > releases or will have a good reason not to do so (and there are a couple > of good reasons for this). Good maintainers understand that QA is more than just getting the latest and greatest version of the package into the archive... -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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