Hi Santiago (2026.11.04_13:23:01_+0000)
The technical committee has not yet discussed this. This reply is just
my personal thoughts.
I found this Makefile bug by building the package on a single-CPU
system, but the same build failure happens:
- When building the package with DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=parallel=1,
which is a supported configuration according to Debian Policy 4.9.1.
I agree with that. It doesn't look like Policy contemplates the idea of
a package *requiring* a higher level of parallelism, and I can't imagine
a need for that.
The maintainer (Matthias Klose) believes that build failures which
happen with DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=parallel=1 are not bugs, just "nice
things to have", and downgraded the bug to wishlist, leaving the issue
unfixed for seven months now.
FWIW, that quoted statement is your summary of Matthias' reply, rather
than a quote of something he said.
I think you both have some reasonable points here. If a package doesn't
build reliably, it's annoying for everyone. If it fails to build in
survey rebuilds (as you are doing) then you'll assume it's a bug, and
file it.
If a package only builds correctly when you hold it exactly the right
way, that's just fragility. Something that people will trip up on from
time to time, and waste time over.
If it doesn't fail to build in the cases that actually matter (buildds
and the maintainers workflows) then in practice the failure is not
terribly serious. Obviously annoying if it affects you, though.
So, I agree that this is a bug in the package. And specifically a bug in
the Debian packaging.
I also agree that it's probably not as serious as a general FTBFS that
would stop the maintainer being able to work on the package, or the
archive to be able to build it. Obviously, the RC-ness of a bug is a
release team decision, I won't weigh in there. I'd use a severity higher
than wishlist, though.
There really isn't much to this disagreement. The bug was filed 7 months
ago, and Matthias has only sent a single reply, lowering the severity
and not applying the patch. Ignored patches are not uncommon in Debian
(or Free Software in general), we can't tell anyone how they should
spend their time. Santiago would like to see a higher severity and the
patch applied.
I think applying the patch is the straightforward thing to do, and I
can't see any obvious reason that that wouldn't happen.
Matthias, would you please have another look at this patch and apply it
if it makes sense to you?
I guess there's a bigger question here of whether we should check the
archive for more similar failures and fix them. To me, these seem like
bugs and probably ones worth fixing. Whether that's a good use of
everyone involved's time is up to them. In general, making Debian less
buggy sounds like something we'd all get behind.
What level of severity those bugs should have is another question. I'd
suggest something in the range of normal to serious.
Stefano
--
Stefano Rivera
http://tumbleweed.org.za/
+1 415 683 3272
