On 09/12/2011 10:02 AM, Colin Watson wrote: > We have 661 build failure bugs open right now: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=ftbfs > > The good news is that this is down from well over 700 yesterday, so we > are making progress. > > The bad news is the build failure queue has been very long for ages, and > we haven't been doing anything consistently effective about it; > certainly some good people have been working on some failures, but the > queue has dominated the effort available to deal with it for a while > now. As a result, we've had to exclude build failures from routine > consideration in release meetings and the like. That was pragmatically > sensible (some of the binaries have been removed, the bulk of the bugs > are against universe [1], etc.), but it really can't go on. Being able > to build your software reliably is one of the most fundamental tenets of > software engineering, and any good team assigns a high priority to > fixing build failures. > > Right now, there's a small number of us cranking through the build > failure queue, but we have allowed this problem to build up far enough > over time that it's going to take a somewhat more concerted effort to > clear it. On the upside, if we can get the queue down to zero or near > zero and keep it there, other things will be easier later: it won't be > as much effort to transition packages over to new libraries, users of > (particularly) non-i386 architectures won't have as many problems due to > build skew between i386 and other architectures, you won't find yourself > making a change only to be sidetracked off into fixing a lurking build > bug that's been hanging around for six months, or trying to make an > entire software stack build on some new architecture. > > > So: I am personally committing to upload fixes for *at least five build > failures per day*, Monday to Friday, until such time as I run out of > things I know or can teach myself how to fix. My own experience is that > I can do this and still have plenty of time to deal with other things in > a working day. If nine other people join me in this commitment, we > should be able to clear the queue in under three weeks. Who's with me? > > I'm expecting this to be mainly fairly experienced developers; fixing > build failures is good practice, but you probably don't have much time > to learn before Oneiric. It probably isn't something to try if you're > brand new to Ubuntu development. But if you've already got your feet > wet with Ubuntu package maintenance and want to try your hand at some of > this, then these links may help: > > http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/FTBFS > http://wiki.debian.org/ToolChain/DSOLinking > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/FTBFS > > Please remember to forward patches to Debian and usertag them > appropriately (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Debian/Usertagging, and note the > usertags in http://wiki.debian.org/ToolChain/DSOLinking as well). > > If you want to work on bugs but don't yet know how to program or > maintain packages, then you may prefer this instead: > > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day > > > [1] If your primary focus is main, you may be tempted to say "oh, they're > in universe, so they don't matter very much". > > Firstly, the noise causes a problem in itself; many Launchpad bug > views don't make it particularly easy to see what component bugs > affect, and we often have to filter things out in order to do > release management effectively. > > Secondly, we often have to promote packages from universe or fix > problems in universe in order to meet user/customer demand or clean > up various bits of the archive, so allowing universe buildability to > be a swamp causes us velocity problems. > > Thirdly, we provide universe for the benefit of our users; even if > Canonical engineers generally have main as their primary focus, we > all lose out if our users are having upgrade problems due to a > popular package in universe failing to build and so being stuck on > an old version of a library that conflicts with other newer > packages, or something like that. [2] > > [2] Longest footnote EVER. > > > Cheers, > I can try to do this as an average of 25 per week. Thanks, Micah
-- ubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
