On Tue, 08 Jun 2021 17:15:44 +0200 Julien Puydt wrote: > I've been convinced that getting a fragile sagemath in next stable > wouldn't be a good thing. You've put much more effort than I have into maintaining scientific software in Debian, so I respect your opinion, but is it really accurate to say that SageMath is fragile as a whole?
With respect to this particular issue, I'd like to share my perspective wrangling with a package that poses a similar dilemma: GCC (I'm working on packaging gcc-sh-elf). Like the status quo with SageMath in Debian, GCC has a test suite where failures are normal, and in general it takes an individual to watch out for what number of failures counts as "too many." Rather than hardcode an arbitrary threshold for what number of failing tests is acceptable, it seems that it's much better, and in the interest of Debian ports and alternative build environments, to just let the tests run for informative purposes. This, I believe, is what the GCC team actually does; the test results get sent to the team mailing list IIRC. Perhaps we should take a similar philosophy towards the tests. At least with GCC and DejaGnu, the test results get written out to a file, so before a new upload, say, one can do a diff on the old and new test results and see if any new regressions were introduced. In this same respect, SageMath test results may be best consulted before new uploads by hand. I believe it's in the best interest of Debian users that this bug be downgraded for Bullseye so Sage can be used in the mostly-wholesome shape it's in, but since I lack expertise in maintaining it I too will leave this to someone else.
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