Control: clone -1 -2 Control: retitle -2 decide whether pam should support DPKG_ROOT Control: tags -2 = Control: reassign -2 tech-ctte
Hi technical comittee members, On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 03:44:54PM +0200, Helmut Grohne wrote: > Within three weeks I want Steve to reply to this bug in a way that > addresses Sam's needs or Sam to agree with moving forward without > Steve's review. Failing that, I will ask the CTTE to override the pam > maintainers on this patch. I hope that it does not surprise you. I am formally asking the CTTE to override the pam maintainers and requiring pam to support DPKG_ROOT. DPKG_ROOT is a feature that allows installing packages into a chroot without using the chroot syscall. The major benefit of doing so is creating foreign chroots without requiring qemu for emulating maintainer scripts. To work in such a setting, relevant maintainer scripts need to be modified to operate on a chroot from outside. The location of the chroot is communicated by dpkg using the DPKG_ROOT environment variable. This feature is relevant to early architecture bootstrap where qemu is not reliably available. As such the package set covered initially is essential (thus covering pam) and shall be extended to build-essential. Patches have been sent to all relevant essential packages and have been applied by most. pam already carries partial support for DPKG_ROOT due to Sam Hartman applying an earlier patch. Thank you. Unfortunately, we later noticed that it was incomplete when we extended our QA and sent a followup patch. This second patch is being pending in pam for about a year. During that year, Sam repeatedly expressed discomfort with how we approached the problem. In the end, Sam requested Steve to comment on the matter. However, Steve has not participated at all. As such, the patch is not being applied and eternally waiting for Steve (no pun intended). We believe that we addressed all concerns (e.g. quality assurance, limitation of scope, public discussion at DC22, etc.) raised by Sam. Yet progress repeatedly stalled on this matter. Please read the bug log for details. I've come to the conclusion that I will be unable to resolve this. Therefore, I ask the CTTE to override the pam maintainers: * pam should support DPKG_ROOT and accept reasonable changes to that end. * In particular, the patch in bug #993161 is considered a reasonable change with bearable maintenance cost and thus should be included in pam. * pam maintainers are in no way required to support DPKG_ROOT beyond accepting reasonable patches and communicating in a timely manner. Keeping DPKG_ROOT in a working state is the sole responsibility of its proponents. Since I am requesting a maintainer override, a super majority is required. Helmut