The released version of Debian is 'stable. Why are bug reports closed against 'sid'? Shouldn't bug reports be closed only in released versions of Debian? What am I missing? Requesting education.
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ch-pkgs.en.html#s-bug-handling 5.8.4 When bugs are closed by new uploads ... you should not close the bug until the package which fixes the bug has been accepted into the Debian archive. Therefore, once you get notification that your updated package has been installed into the archive, you can and should close the bug in the BTS. ...alternately... list the fixed bugs in your debian/changelog file ... I am assuming here that "accepted into the Debian archive" refers to 'sid' in this case. Therefore all bugs are closed when the package is in 'sid' even though this fix may never reach 'stable'. A user of the released Debian may never see the fix. Here is the documented user interface: http://www.debian.org/Bugs/ Viewing bug reports on the WWW http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data={ex}&archive=no [Where {ex} in the URL is any example package name, changed not to pick on any one particular package.] If you find a bug not listed here, please report it. This documentation leads one to believe that if they see a bug in 'stable' that they should report it, no? A package maintainer who is following the rules, will fix the bug, update the package in sid, close the bug. The bug, now closed will disappear from the BTS (being moved to the archive of closed bugs, requiring archive=yes to view). Users using released Debian 'stable' observing the bug who are following the rules will not see the closed report, will report the bug again. The maintainer will see the duplicate bug report and close it. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. The time period during which this may continue could be the two years it took to release 'woody'. The maintainer is frustrated by seeing the same bug reports for things they have fixed and are in the pipeline to stable but not there yet. Again and again. The user is frustrated because they are not seeing any of those bug reports. They are going through effort to create a good bug report, only to be told it is a duplicate. Then they are told to go away, and in some cases griped at for filing a duplicate bug. Shouldn't bugs be "not-closed" until the package moves into 'stable'? (I did not say "open". After a fix perhaps "fixed", or "resolved" to show that it has been addressed in a package that has not yet made it to 'stable'?) Please educate me. What should a user be doing? What should a maintainer be doing? What am I missing? Thanks Bob
pgpZePZzTgj36.pgp
Description: PGP signature
