[Pkg-octave-devel] [lukas.reichlin.lists at gmail.com: Re: Debian's control-2.4.1 and quaternion-2.0.2

[Sébastien Villemot]

Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at laboissiere.net> writes:

> Lukas Reichlin, upstream author of control and quaternion, asked me why 
> the last versions of these packages (2.4.1 and 2.0.2, respectively) are 
> not in testing.  I explained to him the mechanism of the Debian freeze 
> and told him that exceptions for new upstream releases can be made if 
> there are RC bugs against the version in testing.
>
> I said to Lukas that I could file an RC bug report, provided that he list 
> the bugs present in the current versions in testing that would make them 
> unsuitable for release.  He then sent the message below to me, which I am 
> forwarding to your with his autorization.
>
> Please, tell me what you think.

Having new upstream releases entering Wheezy is clearly not an option at
this stage.

What may be possible is to backport fixes from newer releases, provided
they correspond to an important, serious, grave or critical issue. I
recall here the definitions of these severities:

   critical
          makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system)
          break, or causes serious data loss, or introduces a security
          hole on systems where you install the package.

   grave
          makes the package in question unusable or mostly so, or causes
          data loss, or introduces a security hole allowing access to the
          accounts of users who use the package.

   serious
          is a severe violation of Debian policy (roughly, it violates a
          "must" or "required" directive), or, in the package maintainer's
          or release manager's opinion, makes the package unsuitable for
          release.

   important
          a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a package,
          without rendering it completely unusable to everyone.

It seems cleare that none of these issues qualify for "grave", "serious"
or "critical". Maybe some qualify for "important", but this is not
obvious to me. Please elaborate if you think specific fixes can qualify
and why.

Best,

> From: Lukas Reichlin <lukas.reichlin.lists at gmail.com> 
> Subject: Re: Debian's control-2.4.1 and quaternion-2.0.2 (Was Re: [OctDev] image 2.0.0 released) 
> To: Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at laboissiere.net> 
> Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:58:54 +0100 
>
> On 14.11.2012, at 16:04, Rafael Laboissiere <rafael at laboissiere.net> wrote:
>
>> * Lukas Reichlin <lukas.reichlin.lists at gmail.com> [2012-11-14 13:32]:
>>>
>>> control news: http://sourceforge.net/p/octave/code/11425/tree/trunk/octave-forge/main/control/NEWS
>
>  ** feedback
>       Fixed an argument check which caused false positive error messages.
>       It was a copy-paste mistake affecting non-square systems.
>       (Thanks to Tony Olivo)
>
>  ** sensitivity
>       Fixed a problem where an error was raised about an undefined function
>       "issiso".
>
>  ** impulse, initial, lsim, step
>       These time response functions now error out correctly when the user tries to
>       plot multiple systems in one window with mismatching numbers of inputs and
>       outputs.  The problem was caused by Octave's built-in function "size_equal"
>       which gave false positives for LTI objects.  The problem is solved by
>       overloading the built-in function with a new LTI method "size_equal".
>
>>>
>>> quaternion news: http://sourceforge.net/p/octave/code/11425/tree/trunk/octave-forge/main/quaternion/NEWS
>
>  ** eq
>       -- Fix typo bug which gave false positives for the k-component.
>       -- Avoid error if arguments are non-conformant.
>
> This means that  q1 == q2  could give false results. I feel a bit sheepish about that :-)
>
>>>
>>> Note that in "stable", control-1.0.11 does not work properly with octave 3.6.2
>>
>> Ok, thanks.  Let me ask again the crucial question: which are the bugs 
>> in control-2.3.52 and quaternion-2.0.0 that would make those versions 
>> unsuitable for release and that are fixed in control-2.4.1 and 
>> quaternion-2.0.2?  Please, give me an answer.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Rafael
>
> Besides the fixes listed above, there are various enhancements which are 
> a big plus for the users, e.g. control supports system identification, 
> multisystem plots and there are cleanup efforts under the hood. 
> quaternion supports the inversion of quaternion matrices.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lukas
>
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-- 
 .''`.    Sébastien Villemot
: :' :    Debian Developer
`. `'     http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
  `-      GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
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