[Pkg-lirc-maint] Bug#774867: Bug#774867: lirc: diff for NMU version 0.9.0~pre1-1.2

[Stefan Lippers-Hollmann]

Hi

[ Apologies if you receive this twice, my mail relay/ smarthost seems
  to have problems and my previous/ identical response hasn't gotten 
  through yet. ]

On Saturday 17 January 2015, gregor herrmann wrote:
> Control: tags 774867 + patch
> Control: tags 774867 + pending
> 
> Dear maintainer,
> 
> I've prepared an NMU for lirc (versioned as 0.9.0~pre1-1.2) and
> uploaded it to DELAYED/2. Please feel free to tell me if I
> should delay it longer.

First of all, I acknowledge the NMU - thanks a lot, go ahead as you 
wish, but...

[feel free to ignore the rest of this mail]

I don't object to the patch, but it doesn't really help with this bug.
The bug itself only happens when dist-upgrading from squeeze to wheezy,
neither wheezy, jessie or wheezy-->jessie upgrades are affected at all,
so fixing this bug in jessie doesn't help any squeeze user who's just 
now starting to look at dist-upgrading to wheezy at all. Actually it's
even worse, symlink_to_dir was only added to dpkg's maintscript 
collection in dpkg 1.17.14, while squeeze is at 1.15.11 (admitted, 
Pre-Depends: ${misc:Pre-Depends} should handle that aspect).

Therefore I'm curious, what is your plan with this bugfix?
Asking the release team for a jessie unblock doesn't really meet the
unblock criteria anymore, as the bug doesn't affect jessie nor wheezy
to jessie dist-upgrades (actually, had this bug been reported and fixed
in time before the wheezy release, I would have already removed this 
kind of pre-wheezy upgrade support from the packages intended for 
jessie).
Asking the stable-release managers to accept a wheezy-proposed-updates
upload for an equivalent fix targetting the next wheezy point release
would be justified - and I certainly would have done so up to 'a year 
ago', but now that squeeze is EOL for over half a year already, it 
feels a bit late (still correct, but as no actual user ever complained,
'why bother' (and get the stable-release managers busy for basically an
obsolete problem) at this point in time)?
So considerding that this change is neither needed for jessie+1 
(stretch), nor fullfills the unblock criterias for jessie (and isn't
actually needed there either), the (correct) upload can only migrate
to testing (==stretch) after jessie has been released - when and where 
it is even less needed than in jessie itself.

Accordingly, my plan was waiting until this weekend for a potential
response from the reporter, but pending that, to close the bug for
lirc 0.9.0~pre1-1.1 (the package version in jessie, technically not 
100% correct, but it conveys the message correctly; asking the release 
team for a jessie-ignore would basically do the same job) and tagging 
it wheezy and wontfix. But as I mentioned, your change is the correct
solution, it's imho just way too late to fix at this point in time,
when the fix won't ever propagate to the only ones (current squeeze 
users who are planning to dist-upgrade to wheezy) anymore. Making it
just academic busy-work for everyone involved.

To be clear, I very much appreciate your effort - thanks a lot - and 
I'm fine with getting this uploaded to unstable, but I personally don't
see a need to bother the release team with an unblock request 
(certainly not for jessie, nor -at this point in time- for wheezy 
anymore) at this point in the freeze. 
...and the next regular post-jessie lirc upload will just remove all 
pre-jessie upgrade support (including this change[1]) from the package
anyways...

This piuparts mass bug filing imho would have better concentrated on 
just wheezy to jessie issues, rather than murkying the waters by 
including squeeze-->wheezy issues as well, that ship has sailed long
time ago.

Regards
	Stefan Lippers-Hollmann

[1]	there would be reason to make an exception for this particular
	change to go through one stable release, just to get it fixed
	once and for all for everyone, but that's mostly academic here.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-lirc-maint/attachments/20150118/9536adb4/attachment.sig>