On Sat, Jul 25, 2026 at 01:14:32PM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote: > The following message is a courtesy copy of an article > that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.devel.general as well. > > Bill Allombert <[email protected]> writes: > > > Dear Debian developers, > > > > I am trying to fix bug #1089172 > > popularity-contest: migrate cron job to systemd timer on Linux ports > > > > While this is reasonable thing to do, popcon has a number of unusual > > requirements, > > hence the open-minded in the subject... > > Could you say what the unusual requirements are? i couldnt tell from the bug
Here we are. I omited then to avoid debian-devel starting to discuss the requirement instead of the solution... 1/ popcon need to have a minimal package footprint so that it does not twist the statistic (hence it is written in sh and perl-base which are 'Essential: yes' so are always installed anyway) 2/ it should work on Debian derivative that might not use systemd or use it differently. 3/ it should not break backward compatibility and user customization, so /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest should still be run. Specifically for the timer: 1/ the report need to be sent about once a week at some random time to minimize congestion on the server side. 2/ if the host is not powered or not online at the time the report is to be sent, sending the report need to be retried later, about one time per day. This is done currently by the /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest running every day at some time determined randomly at installation time in /etc/cron.d/popularity-contest. Thanks for your interest. Cheers, -- Bill. <[email protected]> Imagine a large red swirl here.
