Hi Ansgar, On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 08:32:11AM +0200, Ansgar wrote: > I believe bugs should always be assigned to source packages as source > packages are really the unit we use to keep track of packages.
Since the thread seems largly in favour of this, let me strongly disagree. I extensively use the distinction between source and binary packages and loosing it would be making my work very much harder. The ftbfs tag specifically relies on this and so do the cross build user tags. If some tool (say debhelper, because it happens every so often) breaks building a package, then that bug must be filed against the debhelper binary package and not against the debhelper source package. Doing otherwise would imply that debhelper were failing to build, which is not the case. The packages that do fail to build are the affected source packages. If on the other hand, debhelper were failing to build itself, the bug should be assigned to the debhelper source package. I do fix up wrong assignments every so often. If you want to get rid of the distinction, please offer an alternate way to quickly tell which packages are known to ftbfs. The arguments brought forward for this change seem very unconvincing to me: 1. Renamed binary packages. Source packages do get renamed as well and this is equally painful. 2. Confusion for users. The BTS is difficult for new users in many ways, but I've rarely seen users struggle with pinpointing the correct package. Instead they tend to just file with "some" package and that is wrong every now and then. It is easy to fix up and we only have to do that anyway if the bug is meant to be long-lived or affects stable. More often than not, such reassignments cross source package boundaries. 3. Maintainers missing bugs. The source package view includes all bugs filed against all binary packages and the source package. You won't miss any bugs if you always use that view. 4. Question of what should be filed with binary packages. Guillem already said that build/licensing issues should end up with the source package. Binary package bugs include crashes and wrong runtime behaviour. 5. Non-alternative usertags: usertags are insufficient as the crucial part is affected packages and this is not reasonably expressible with usertags. We'd need "useraffects" first. Please keep in mind that a lot of QA in Debian currently relies on quickly getting a relatively accurate view of which packages are supposed to be buildable. Until there is an alternative solution: Yes, please do distinguish between source and binary packages. At least for long-lived bugs. Helmut