Hi! On Mon, 2013-08-26 at 09:58:33 +0200, Niels Thykier wrote: > At March 1st, we had 3630 packages missing at least one recommended > target according to Lintian. Yesterday, the number was 3122. Both > numbers include source packages in sid and in experimental, so it may be > slightly inflated[1]. > The change translates to about 85 packages a month are being > "fixed"[2], but our graph suggests that somewhere between May and July > the rate increased[3]. Indeed, for the last month, a total of 96 (~3 a > day) were "fixed". > If the current rate is sustained, we are looking at ~3 years for this > problem to fix itself. Even if we assume 10% of these to only affect > experimental (see [1]) and all fixes affect sid, we are still look at > ~2.5 years.
Well, if we take into account the dynamics of normal transitions the remaining long tail usually takes a very long time to get done w/o active incentives. I've been passively tracking the Source-Version substvar migration since around 2007, out of curiosity on how this kind of migrations go w/o any active external intervention (just as an observer), which I'll try to post on -devel at some point, but in any case the first year around 900~ packages got fixed, next year 190~, then 110~, 30~, 15~, and a year up to now 3. I doubt the remaning 43 packages will get fixed soon (as in 1-2 years) if no MBF or possibly NMUs are performed. > On 2013-01-24 23:13, Roger Leigh wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 04:46:06AM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote: > > [...] > >> I think the less painful way to achieve that would be by a staged > >> increase of the enforcing level of those targets, where changing dpkg > >> to require them should be the last stage when really few packages > >> still do not provide it, because otherwise mass rebuilds, binNMUs and > >> similar become very painful. > >> > >> The first stage could be to wait a bit after testing thaws to see the > >> progress; after a bit, change/rename the tag to an error w/o autoreject. > >> Wait and see how it progresses, and after a bit more (several months) > >> change it to autoreject, but not for binNMUs if that's possible? to > >> avoid disrupting the release process. And then only a small tail > >> should remain which could be handled by a MBF etc. After or during > >> this last stage dpkg could be switched. > > > > I think this all makes a good deal of sense. It's certainly > > logistically impractical to "force" the issue by changing dpkg until > > the vast majority of packages are converted, so we certainly need to > > encourage adoption by other means and do this as the final step. > > So, the question is now - do we want to scale up the enforcement level, > and, if so, to what? As mentioned earlier, I am willing to increase the > severity of the tag (provided it does not become an auto-reject overnight). I think if we'd want to get this done relatively soon, then it needs “active herding”. Increasing the lintian tag to a non auto-reject error, mails to debian-devel (or d-d-a) and possibly blog posts encouraging people to switch packages, someone to possibly handle it as a release goal to give it visibility, etc. After a while, and depending on the amount still remaning, probably switching to more aggressive methods, like I described above would help with the remaining straddlers. Thanks, Guillem -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-dpkg-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130828022807.gd23...@gaara.hadrons.org
