>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Wise <p...@debian.org> writes:
>> If we throw away binaries by default, I do believe we need a mechanism
>> for maintainers to signal that this is a bootstrap upload.
Paul> My proposed mechanism is that when the buildds cannot do the job due
to
Paul> need for a bootstrap process, the maintainer should do a binary-only
Paul> build (using whatever ugly hacks are needed), dak should import that
Paul> into a special part of the archive for bootstrapping packages that
need
Paul> that and then tell the buildds to do a new non-bootstrap build but
Paul> using the bootstrap archive.
I don't care about the mechanism.
What I care is that we not go through a period where invoking the
mechanism involves adding a round trip with ftpmaster, with waiting for
an upload to be accepted, or with the release team, or otherwise delay
the process.
We've heard again and again from maintainers that the more they can
accomplish within a single unit of attention span, the better.
Every time you have to come back later after some process has done its
thing, it makes maintaining stuff more frustrating, less rewarding, and
more difficult.
Many have argued that the current dance with new--where you have to
upload binaries for new, but then later upload without binaries for
testing--is one step too far in that direction. If those people are
right, we should have waited until we could throw away binaries from new
before requiring built-on-buildd for testing. I understand the politics
are complex and that the release team's decision may have given
motivation to push for patches to throw away binaries from new.
Based on the discussion of maintainer motivations, I think going through
a similar period where bootstrap uploads got harder--even if it
eventually got fixed--would be a mistake and would not value the time of
our maintainers.
So, in order to value the time of our maintainers, I think a change to
throw away binaries from uploads that don't hit new needs to block on a
way of handling bootstrap builds.
(Ideally that would be part of a patch to throw away binaries from
uploads to new, but the trade offs are more complex for that situation.)
