Michael Schmitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > When complaints about the inconsistent directories in disks-m68k surfaced > (Dec. 20, I had never seen that my April updates were installed in June > otherwise I'd have complained before) I checked the contents of these > directories and described to Phil how this situation could be remedied > (basically, merge 0606 and 0301 trees according to the map file). That was > on Dec. 21, the problem being that I didn't CC ftpmaster and didn't file a > bug report (those who know me a bit probably know that I abhor the BTS, > especially in cases where not a simple package is involved). Next thing I > hear is somebody I can't remember seeing any mails from before yelling > bloody murder. To be fair, Phil tried to follow my instructions but it > didn't work out (maybe because of things like confusing .lha and .lzh and > such).
I think I could have done the whole thing in another 10 minutes as it happens, I just misunderstood that I was meant to be doing a merge of parts of the old and new directories. By that time I'd deleted the old directory though, and it did occur to me that I really probably shouldn't start changing the archive before making CDs unless there's no prospect of the fix being applied to the master site. I'm sorry you don't like the BTS Michael, because the lack of a bug against ftp.debian.org just made me enter the ``Submit a bug, and wait'' cycle once again. I really don't think you can blame the ftpmasters for not fixing things like this, if you don't report a bug. Since ftpmaster is now a shared job, I'd imagine the only way of keeping track is by checking for open bugs. > The end of it: everybody's frustrated, and less willing to put in the > necessary effort than before. For my part, Debian has gotten way too > complicated and slow to react almost to bother. I've spent more time on > this discussion today than I could reasonably afford. But we need to find > out what to improve next time, so please suggest something... Am I right in thinking that the m68k boot-floppies problem was not reported as a bug before the release? If it had been reported as an important bug before release, presumably it would have been fixed. Does this mean that the m68k crew don't consider this important, don't like the BTS or just thing that the BTS is too i386-centric and fails to serve other architectures properly? If this isn't important, then I'd guess that's because the CD images are not that important either, and you're all using the ftp sites or some such. That's fine with me, but I'd like to know these things so I can avoid wasting my time building images that are not getting used. Perhaps it's not important because nobody actually uses stable m68k, because there are fewer of you and you all run unstable, say. If that's the case then there really is no point making these CDs, since unstable snapshots would be much better for everyone. If it is important to have stable m68k CDs, then we need to modify our use of the BTS to reflect that, or perhaps ensure that someone that uses m68k (and each other architecture) attempts to make CDs prior to releases, so we can find these sorts of problems. (B.T.W. CD building also highlights unmet dependencies, which is another problem that keeps recurring.) Cheers, Phil.
