Scripsit Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For these reasons, I think the snapshotting approach is a better option, > because it puts the package selection choices directly in the hands of > the porters rather than trying to munge the existing testing scripts > into something that will make reasonable package selections for you.
What is "the snapshotting approach"? I understood the announcement such that the lesser architectures are only ever allowed to have a single version of each .deb distributed by the project, namely the lastest one built at any given time. I think that would be vastly to the non-benefit of such an architecture's users, and I don't see how other architectures can be harmed by allowing the lesser architectures to distribute whatever .debs they manage to build corresponding to the official testing and stable distributions. Especially, if I somehow dug a Foomatic 664 with punched-tape main memory out of a dumpster and wanted to run Debian on it (assuming somebody had ported it), then for my own sanity I would like to have to option of running the same software versions as I'm running on the stable x86 box. If lesser architectures are _required_ to run the bleeding edge, then Debian are significanly degrading the user experience, and with no real gain that I can see. > First, if they're not being kept in sync, it increases the number of > matching source packages that we need to keep around (which, as has > been discussed, is already a problem); There could be a rule specifying that only versions that _are_ being kept in sync can be in the archive, with some reasonable time limit to let the arch build the newest version when it migrates to testing. > second, if you want to update using the testing scripts, you either have > to run a separate copy of britney for each arch (time consuming, > resource-intensive) But if the arch's porters are willing to do that, why shouldn't they be allowed to? > third, if failures on non-release archs are not release-critical > bugs (which they're not), you don't have any sane measure of > bugginess for britney to use in deciding which packages to keep out. A lesser architecture's concept of testing could just be, "we're trying our best to keep up with the package versions in the official testing, regardless of bug counts". -- Henning Makholm "Jeg mener, at der eksisterer et hemmeligt selskab med forgreninger i hele verden, som arbejder i det skjulte for at udsprede det rygte at der eksisterer en verdensomspændende sammensværgelse."