On 20/07/17 at 11:00 +1000, Paul Wise wrote: > On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 7:29 AM, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > > It is becoming increasingly painful to do QA work due to the number of > > packages in unstable that have been completely broken for a long time. > > Could you detail what the pain points are for archive rebuilds?
There are three main problems: - loss of (CPU) time rebuilding packages that are completely broken anyway, but that's a minor issue. - some of those packages are affected by strange bugs that cause random failures or build hangs - I keep track of past failures, to avoid filing bugs twice. but from time to time, I need to start with a clean list. Currently, that means looking at 653 build failures. > > I've been pondering with ignoring packages not in testing when doing > > archive rebuilds, but that's not really a good solution. > > Could you detail why ignoring packages not in testing is not a solution? it would solve the problem for me but: - it would make it more unlikely to detect problems in new packages early, because the package would first have to migrate to testing to be tested - I'm assuming that everybody doing QA work is running into those broken packages > > Here is a list, with the popcon insts, and the last upload: > > Some of these were removed due to bugs that are only a problem in > certain situations. ... but were still considered grave enough by the release team not to be included in neither jessie nor stretch. > Some of these are related to a specific blend/team packages and might > warrant a separate ping to the relevant discussion lists, I expect > that few folks read the team lists in Maintainer fields any more. can you give specific examples? > Some of these have solutions. ... but nobody cared enough to implement them over the last 2.5 years. > Some of these are for important areas like mobile. > can you give specific examples? I think that the bottom line is: can we draw a line that allows us to identify packages that are no longer suitable for unstable? Or should we just accept that unstable has become a staging area where all broken packages are welcomed, even if there is no interest no hope to see them again in a stable release? I think we should avoid "once in unstable, forever in unstable" to become an official motto. ;) Lucas