3 ms·

> They also patch out old version time bombs As an open source software developer, I do have some sympathy for the upstream devs here, and some frustration wit

> They also patch out old version time bombs As an open source software developer, I do have some sympathy for the upstream devs here, and some frustration with distro maintainer policies. I'm not interested in getting a bunch of bug reports for issues that were fixed 4 years ago, or introduced because Debian maintainers "patched out" something they shouldn't have.

yunohn 5y ago
Exactly. Distro maintainers do not face the same issues that the upstream software developers do. Maintainers only make their job harder.
- account42 5y ago
  > Maintainers only make their job harder. That's unnecessarily harsh. Distro maintainer's primary responsibility is making the Distro as a whole work together and sometimes that means choices that are not optimal for individual programs/libraries on their own. But packaging itself does already reduce the burden on upstream a lot by preempting any build-related support requests from users as well as many compatibility-related ones. Sometimes upstreams interest is also not aligned with the user's interest (e.g. the topic of this thread) and there the distro will tend to choose the user's interests - that's a good thing. As for time bombs specifically, those don't make much sense when the software is installed via a repository that has an update mechanism. Not wanting bug reports for old versions is no excuse for planned obsolence. If you think a distro is increasing your support burden it is quite acceptable to tell users from that distro to use the distro's bug tracker.
  - Dayshine 5y ago
    >If you think a distro is increasing your support burden it is quite acceptable to tell users from that distro to use the distro's bug tracker. Sadly, this is in itself adding a large support burden. I think distributions should be doing a much much much better job of informing their users how they should report issues. tracker.debian.org seems to be almost impossible to find on google for example (If I search i3-wm debian it's not in the first 5 pages!).
    - pabs3 5y ago
      tracker.debian.org is the internal site for Debian contributors, packages.debian.org is the site for Debian users.
rlpb 5y ago
As a Debian Developer, I don't share your view. Debian users want a unified release cadence. That's why they're using Debian. For example, they specifically don't want random packages to update, changing behaviour, because upstream bundled feature changes with bugfixes. I understand that upstreams might get frustrated that their bugfixes haven't made it to stable distribution releases, but it's important to understand that expecting otherwise (except with manual, per-fix intervention) is generally against the principle of having a stable distribution release in the first place, and exactly why users are choosing to use stable distribution releases. > Debian maintainers "patched out" something they shouldn't have Debian sets its own policy about what is and isn't acceptable, in order to give users consistent behaviour across all packages. Again: Debian users want this consistency; users who don't want this use other distributions (like Arch for example, which aims for the opposite). An example is this topic: Debian maintainers generally patch out telemetry-by-default. > I'm not interested in getting a bunch of bug reports for issues that were fixed 4 years ago, or introduced because Debian maintainers "patched out" something they shouldn't have. I agree with this part. Distribution users should be reporting bugs to their distribution bug trackers in the first instance, and only sending reports upstream in cases that the bugs are confirmed to be relevant to upstream.

yunohn 5y ago

Exactly. Distro maintainers do not face the same issues that the upstream software developers do. Maintainers only make their job harder.

account42 5y ago
> Maintainers only make their job harder. That's unnecessarily harsh. Distro maintainer's primary responsibility is making the Distro as a whole work together and sometimes that means choices that are not optimal for individual programs/libraries on their own. But packaging itself does already reduce the burden on upstream a lot by preempting any build-related support requests from users as well as many compatibility-related ones. Sometimes upstreams interest is also not aligned with the user's interest (e.g. the topic of this thread) and there the distro will tend to choose the user's interests - that's a good thing. As for time bombs specifically, those don't make much sense when the software is installed via a repository that has an update mechanism. Not wanting bug reports for old versions is no excuse for planned obsolence. If you think a distro is increasing your support burden it is quite acceptable to tell users from that distro to use the distro's bug tracker.
- Dayshine 5y ago
  >If you think a distro is increasing your support burden it is quite acceptable to tell users from that distro to use the distro's bug tracker. Sadly, this is in itself adding a large support burden. I think distributions should be doing a much much much better job of informing their users how they should report issues. tracker.debian.org seems to be almost impossible to find on google for example (If I search i3-wm debian it's not in the first 5 pages!).
  - pabs3 5y ago
    tracker.debian.org is the internal site for Debian contributors, packages.debian.org is the site for Debian users.

rlpb 5y ago

As a Debian Developer, I don't share your view. Debian users want a unified release cadence. That's why they're using Debian. For example, they specifically don't want random packages to update, changing behaviour, because upstream bundled feature changes with bugfixes. I understand that upstreams might get frustrated that their bugfixes haven't made it to stable distribution releases, but it's important to understand that expecting otherwise (except with manual, per-fix intervention) is generally against the principle of having a stable distribution release in the first place, and exactly why users are choosing to use stable distribution releases. > Debian maintainers "patched out" something they shouldn't have Debian sets its own policy about what is and isn't acceptable, in order to give users consistent behaviour across all packages. Again: Debian users want this consistency; users who don't want this use other distributions (like Arch for example, which aims for the opposite). An example is this topic: Debian maintainers generally patch out telemetry-by-default. > I'm not interested in getting a bunch of bug reports for issues that were fixed 4 years ago, or introduced because Debian maintainers "patched out" something they shouldn't have. I agree with this part. Distribution users should be reporting bugs to their distribution bug trackers in the first instance, and only sending reports upstream in cases that the bugs are confirmed to be relevant to upstream.