> To summarize the bug: the logging behavior of the snmp package changed > when we switched from CMU SNMP to the UCD implementation.
Yes, the user interface which might be used by many people of an essential remote monitoring tool changed without any notice by the system administrator. (and it is a bad thing to notice this one week later.) > Here's what I think: > > 1. I agree the change from CMU to UCD snmp should have been better > documented. Perhaps the maintainer should have made it more obvious > by calling the UCD package "ucd-snmp", as he named the source package. There is no problem in changing something but it should be documented somewhere which interfaces change when you do "apt-get dist-upgrade". If I install a new package I know that I can't expect to get the same interfaces as I know them from other unix systems because you might use another implementation. > 2. However, I don't think it's a good idea for maintainers to > gratuitously change upstream behavior. AFAIK you are the only person > who has brought up the logfile format change as being a problem. > Since the maintainer (David Engel) didn't know it was going to be a > problem, I don't see how he'd do anything different. I agree with you but maybe we have different opinions about what a distribution is. - I think it should _help_ the administrator and make his life easier and _not_ change interfaces without notice. It's _not_ the maintainers fault. There is currently no way in debian for maintainers to document the changes that have been made in the user interface. please take a look at http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_34.html#SEC34 in the gnu coding standards. I think such a utility is barely needed by debian and maybe also other distributions. _user_ _visible_ changes are _worth_ to be documented. You can do this in other operating systems with a GUI but on unix, as we all know it, an essential part is to combine your utilities and automate complex parts. That's why there is a POSIX standard which also defines a standard user interface. In my opinion this is _not_ enough because the free software community has more de-facto-standards than anyone else. - That's why I think it is important to document these changes. > 3. You can always keep using snmp from stable if you prefer its behavior. That's right. - But I have to accept all it's problems (if there are some) and I have to _know_ that there was a change.
