Debian Developers - Re: Bug#238193: use debconf to manage permissions of ls-r not high-priority question

Author

Re: Bug#238193: use debconf to manage permissions of ls-r not high-priority question

Steve Langasek

2004-03-15, 8:34 pm

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 04:26:19PM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote:
> package: tetex-bin
> severity: important

> Pretend that I'm a new user of TeX. I install TeX as a build
> dependency of some package I want to build. (The second part is true;
> I'm actually fairly familiar with Tex, but not everyone in the world
> is)

> I'm prompted with the following:

> Configuring tetex-bin
> ---------------------

> The metafont program can store fonts generated by users running xdvi, dvips,
> etc. so they need not be re-generated repeatedly. They are stored in
> /var/lib/texmf and /var/cache/fonts, with "ls-R" file lists showing wherethe
> font files are stored.

> Accepting this option will allow you to easily manage the permissions of those
> ls-R files using debconf.

> :-! Use debconf to manage permissions of ls-R files?

> That's completely unacceptable to present as a high priority question
> to a new user. IT has an obvious default (yes) and tetex-bin is a
> dependency of enough stuff that it should not ask questions during a
> normal install.

As usual, this question only exists because it masks a more insidious
bug: there would be no reason to ask at all if the debconf support were
actually policy-compliant in the handling of users' local configuration.

This should, by all rights, be a "serious" bug, but I don't know whether
it's realistic to consider this RC for sarge now that it's been ignored
for so long.

--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

Colin Watson

2004-03-16, 5:35 am

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:28:56AM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> wrote:
>
> The problem is that in fact we don't know whether sarge will be released
> within weeks or months. Currently we are dividing our efforts between
> the current packages with rather outdated tetex-2.0.2 and tetex-3.0
> which will be released within the next weeks (in this case really 2-6
> weeks, I'm sure).

I think it's a bad idea to try to get new major versions of major
systems like tetex into sarge at the moment, and I think trying to do so
is likely to delay sarge.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]

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Colin Watson

2004-03-16, 9:35 am

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 11:31:38AM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> schrieb:
>
> If we could be sure that sarge will be released, say, before July, I
> would totally agree with you. But we can't, at least I don't know. If we
> happen to release in October, base is frozen sometime in July, and other
> stuff later in Summer, then I would find it hard to explain to users why
> we didn't include tetex from March or early April.
>
> I think what is delaying sarge is not that the evil maintainers ;-) of
> $package try to get their new upstream version in. It's rather that they
> don't know whether they should try to do so, or concentrate on fixing
> bugs that will likely not occurr in new upstream at all.

There will hopefully be another release update soon; we're holding
reasonably to the last schedule posted on -devel-announce, although
there are still a number of serious bugs in the base system that need to
be ironed out and a few more architectures that need to be hammered into
shape for d-i. In the meantime, it does make our lives harder in release
planning when people drop in major new versions of major packages, and
it makes it harder to get a freeze working.

--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]

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Steve Langasek

2004-03-17, 9:42 am

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 10:28:56AM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
[color=darkred]
[color=darkred]
[color=darkred]
> I am aware that we are not very good at this (but improving). But in
> this particular case, could you please elaborate a little? Not only wouldwe
> have to safely figure out the "user's local configuration" - in this
> case whether he manually set the permissions of the ls-R files. The
> problem is also that upstream changed ls-R handling a couple of times.

> On a fresh install (if the files simply don't exist) we needn't ask
> anything, that's right. But if we do find something, I currently see no
> easy way.

Sorry, I guess I didn't read the debconf question closely enough -- I
mistook it for one of the other questions that have existed in the past.
If this is really just asking about managing the *permissions*, I can't
see that asking the question is an RC bug. I do agree it probably
doesn't need to be a high priority question.

[color=darkred]
> The problem is that in fact we don't know whether sarge will be released
> within weeks or months. Currently we are dividing our efforts between
> the current packages with rather outdated tetex-2.0.2 and tetex-3.0
> which will be released within the next weeks (in this case really 2-6
> weeks, I'm sure).

If by "weeks" you mean "less than a month", I think it's safe to say
that at the current rate of progress, sarge will not be releasable in
that time period. I'd love to be proven wrong by an *improvement* in
the current rate of progress.

But I definitely don't think it will take "many months", as you suggest
in another message. I definitely think we should be able to get this
release out before July. Our chances of achieving this are better if
maintainers restrain themselves from uploading major changes to major
packages over the next month or so.

Cheers,
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer

Joey Hess

2004-03-17, 9:42 am

Frank Küster wrote:
>
> So what does this mean? To me, it is still not clear whether this means
> weeks or many months. Perhaps I could know better if I followed the
> development of d-i closer. But in fact I'd rather spend my time fixing
> bugs in my packages.

If it helps, in the two months between beta 1 of d-i and beta 2, we
added two new architectures. In the two months between beta 2 and beta 3
of d-i, we added support for four new architectures, and dropped
support for one on the floor at the last minute (oops, but it'll be back
in shape next week).

However, since work on all arches has been happening mostly in parallel
except for odd cases like Jeff Bailey who is closley involved in
something like three ports, we are not starting from 0% on the three
remaining architectures. More like 30% for arm and 90% for s390 and
hppa. Things also do become easier to port after the first several
ports, even installers. So I expect our progress to ramp up somewhat
faster than many seem to expect.

--
see shy jo

(Note that the above is a gross oversimplification, and ignores issues
including but not necessarily limited to subarchitectures, and quality
of hardware coverage within certian architectures. It contains forward
looking statements, and may cause cancer in lab animals.)