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

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Bill Allombert]
> So when the atime get actually updated ?

Not entire sure, but I believe it will be updated when the kernel
package is installed or when the initrd is updated?

> If we do not know how to interpret the data, the data is useless. 

Well, with that argument, the vote/last use times can be removed
completely from popcon, as it is very hard to know how to interpret
the data.  Yet it has proven to be useful, so I believe it isn't
useless.

> This is a loss of privacy without any benefit.

The sysadmin have already said yes to participate and submit this
information to popcon.debian.org.

> What is the proportion of HTTP and SMTP report received ?  I will
> give you my estimate tomorrow. What is yours ?

A quick look in the apache log on popcon.debian.org
(gluck.debian.org), tell me that 4916 submissions was sent using http
between 2006-07-23 09:57 -0600 and 2006-07-30 01:55 -0600.  According
to the summary web page, 13849 submissions were sent the last 20 days.
So my guess is that 35% of the submissions are received over HTTP.  Of
these, I believe (not sure how to verify it) that most of the new
installations of popularity-contest uses HTTP, and most of the old
installations uses SMTP.

The raw numbers:

  pere at gluck:~/% head -1  /var/log/apache/access.log
  66.92.42.28 - - [23/Jul/2006:09:57:35 -0600] "GET /rss20.xml
    HTTP/1.0" 304 - "-" "xscreensaver-text/1.3"
  pere at gluck:~/% tail -1  /var/log/apache/access.log
  145.97.196.102 - - [30/Jul/2006:01:55:11 -0600] "GET /planet.png
    HTTP/1.1" 304 - "http://planet.debian.org" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
    MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"
  pere at gluck:~/ grep popcon-upload  /var/log/apache/access.log|wc
     4916   58992  652560
  pere at gluck:~/%

> > Do you mean '.deb' packages when you write 'Debian packages'?  I read
> 
> No. '.deb' files are files embedding a Debian package.
> 
> > 'Debian packages' as packages from the Debian archive, and wanted to
> > make it clear that also non-debian packages (aka the packages listed
> > in the unknown section on <URL:http://popcon.debian.org/>) are
> > reported.
> 
> The usual usage is that a Debian package is something registered
> with the Debian package management system. This is exacly what
> popcon report.  Packages registered by others systems are not
> reported.

Right.  Then your understanding of Debian package differ from the one
I read in the description.  I want the text to express that all
packages registered within dpkg (aka installed) are reported, no
matter their source.  Not sure how to rephrase it in a way that both
you and me would read to express that.

> This _is_ incorrect: if you install popularity-contest from Debian
> on Debian Edu, it will report to Debian not to Skolelinux.

That depend on the configuration.  If /etc/popularity-contest.conf
include the URL to the Skolelinux collector, it will report there
instead.

> They have to patch popcon to make it report to another server
> anyway, so they should fix the documentation to suit.

It isn't really required to patch popcon to do that.  One just need to
edit /etc/popularity-contest.conf.

> It harms non-buggy programs that use
> Build-Depends/Build-Depends-Indep correctly.

Can you explain what the harm is?  As far as I can understand, such
program would still install the same dependencies?  Do such programs
exist, btw?

> We should wait a week more. I have still ton of change to review.

OK.

> I am still disappointed you never ask my opinion _before_ commiting
> a change.

When I am in doubt, I submit my comments to the BTS, and hope you get
those messages.  It seem to me the good place to store opinions and
comments about changes to the package.  When I am not in doubt, I
commit the chnages to CVS as it is very easy to undo changes there if
I've made a mistake.  For major rewrites, I start a discussion on the
popcon-devel mailing list, while I implement minor improvements right
away.  I trust you to do the same, as I expect you to do your best and
in general improve the package.

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen