[Popcon-developers] Please review new description and question text

[Bill Allombert]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 10:11:14AM +0200, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 
> I've updated popcon, and changed the templates and package
> description.  I believe it would be good to have the text reviewed
> before sending it to the translators.  Please have a look, and suggest
> improvements if the text is wrong, unclear or redundant. :)

Here my comments:

  [Petter Reinholdtsen]
  * Changed popcon-submit.cgi to only report success when it is able to extract
    the submitter ID from the report.
  * Changed prepop.pl to only fail if mkdir fails when the directory is
    missing in the first place.
  * Make sure HTTP headers use \r\n instead of \n as line ending, to
    avoid confusing transparent Cisco proxies.  Patch from
    Richard Burton.  (Closes: #379732)
  * Check files in ^/boot/ as well, to detect if a kernel package was
    used. (Closes: #229237)

This does not fix #229237: lilo and grub do not update the atime of
the kernel you boot, so this is useless. I strongly suggest we revert
it. 
On the other hand, it seems that kernel modules atime are updated
so maybe this is a solution, though depmod will reset them, which
would render the atime useless. This needs to be investigated, though.
    
  * Clarify participation question, to make it easier to understand
    for those that do not know what the popularity contest
    is.  Based on patch from Thijs Kinkhorst.  (Closes: #361840)
  * Change the default HTTP submission setting, from no to yes.  It is
    well tested and work fine.

As long as we keep SMTP as a back up, I have no objection, but 
I would like to see more data before claiming that HTTP submissions
is generally reliable.
    
  * Remove question about submission method (http/smtp).  The HTTP
    method is and should be the primary submit method for new
    installations, and existing installations will continue to only
    use SMTP.  This removes the unclear question. (Closes: #317527)
  * Remove unused template popularity-contest/hostid-failed.
  * Change package description and question text to make it less
    debian specific and avoid indication that only Debian packages are
    reported (also non-Debian packages are reported).  Based on patch
    from Ubuntu and input from Christian Perrier.

I disagree. popcon report Debian packages and only Debian packages,
popcon does not report other types of software packages.
The fact that it reportl Debian packages made by ther distributors
does not change that.

Also popularity-contest, as shipped report to the Debian developers
only, not to the distribution developers if you are using another
distribution. Claiming otherwise is not accurate.

  * Adjust the popularity-contest(8) manual page to only say 'submit',
    instead of 'email', to avoid confusing users. (Closes: #341144)

  * Update standards-version from 3.6.2 to 3.7.2.  No changes needed.
  * Add Build-Depends with the same dependencies as
    Build-Depends-Indep, to keep lintian happy.

Since this is clearly a bug in lintian, I don't see the point of that.

Cheers,
Bill.