[Popcon-developers] Bug#238687: Submit Debian release and subarchs

[Bill Allombert]

On Sun, Feb 19, 2006 at 01:38:35PM +0100, Falk Hueffner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to lobby again for the inclusion of my patch at
> http://bugs.debian.org/238687 again, which reports Alpha
> subarchitectures and the Debian version. The motivation is to decide
> whether to drop ev4 or ev56 support. The objections were:
> 
> * Subarchitecture information should come from another package. Well,
>   there is no such package right now, and it seems silly to start one
>   containing 10 lines of code. Moreover, I would prefer, as a matter
>   of principle, to only report information we are sure is needed for
>   some concrete decision.

At least you can see what kernels are in use:

 From http://popcon.debian.org/main/base/by_vote

181   linux-image-2.6.15-1-486         295     0     0     0   295             
182   linux-image-2.6.15-1-686         791     0     0     0   791             
183   linux-image-2.6.15-1-686-smp     209     0     0     0   209             
184   linux-image-2.6.15-1-alpha-generic 3     0     0     0     3             
185   linux-image-2.6.15-1-alpha-smp     1     0     0     0     1             
186   linux-image-2.6.15-1-k7          416     0     0     0   416             
187   linux-image-2.6.15-1-k7-smp       27     0     0     0    27             
188   linux-image-2.6.15-1-mac           1     0     0     0     1             
189   linux-image-2.6.15-1-mckinley      3     0     0     0     3             
190   linux-image-2.6.15-1-mckinley-smp  2     0     0     0     2
191   linux-image-2.6.15-1-mvme16x       1     0     0     0     1             
192   linux-image-2.6.15-1-nslu2         2     0     0     0     2             
193   linux-image-2.6.15-1-parisc        4     0     0     0     4             
194   linux-image-2.6.15-1-parisc64      3     0     0     0     3             
195   linux-image-2.6.15-1-powerpc64     2     0     0     0     2             
196   linux-image-2.6.15-1-s390x         1     0     0     0     1             
197   linux-image-2.6.15-1-s3c2410       1     0     0     0     1             
198   linux-image-2.6.15-1-sparc64      16     0     0     0    16             
199   linux-image-2.6.15-1-sparc64-smp   3     0     0     0     3   

More importantly at this point there are still no reliable way to find
out the sub-architecture. Collecting data is one thing, processing them
is another. I would not mind too much reporting the sub-architecture if
there was a Debian official way to get it.

> * /etc/debian_version is unreliable. However, I don't think the
>   percentage of users actively setting their /etc/debian_version to
>   something bogus is that high, so it would be still useful.

Actually you can easily know the numbers of submissions from each
distributions using the version information:
woody (unknown): 449
sarge (1.28): 2986
testing/unstable (1.31/1.32): 6333
outdated snapshot of testing/unstable (others): 641

I think it is better than what the debian_version would give you.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe at debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.