Hi, Michael Tokarev <[email protected]> (2026-07-11): > Re-reading #925979 again, it feels like at the time, things were in > hurry for the upcoming buster release, and "something" went wrong. > But I really don't see where the breakage might come from, - it is > just wrong. Upstream busybox without the hacks Just Works, and it > works better than our hacked version (because of the changes in > showenv() to display the "bad" variabled). > > Maybe that was the issue here? -- somewhere in d-i it compared the > output of `set` with something? But it is very unlikel. > > > The regular upstream version should work just fine... > > I think it should be okay to drop the two patches now and see what > happens next. > > I'll do that in a couple days, if no one objects.
I don't have enough time or energy to look back at what happened exactly at the time, but I'm pretty sure something broke in some obvious fashion, and that whatever I implemented (even if it looks weird now) restore whatever was broken. Because I don't have an infinite amount of time, and because I cannot get involved with every bit of code that ends up in d-i, I know I tend to be overly conservative in general, but particularly near the end of a given release cycle. In that case, unless I have a strong incentive to do otherwise, I give priority to whatever existed before and wasn't known to be badly broken (i.e. maintaining or restoring the status quo), and it's very possible that doing so isn't the best approach on the long run because doing so render future improvements ineffective. But that's the best I can do, especially under time constraints. I've only skimmed over your messages, but it seems possible that is leading to what you call “mess” today. Since your tests look fine, your plan looks sane to me: it's a good time to clean everything up, check whether we get big bad regressions (old or new). Plenty of room to investigate/adjust if needed. Sorry for the mess, thanks for that analysis and your work on busybox in general, and for the coordination. Cheers, -- Cyril Brulebois ([email protected]) <https://debamax.com/> D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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