Hi Dmitry, On Sat, Jan 24, 2026 at 12:44:28PM +1100, Dmitry Smirnov wrote: > On Wednesday, 14 January 2026 9:24:13 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time > Helmut Grohne wrote: > > Dear gitlab-ci-multi-runner maintainer and ftp team, > > > > a month has passed since filing a suggestion to remove > > gitlab-ci-multi-runner from Debian. It was suggested for removal due to > > not being part of trixie nor forky and having accumulated a long-standing > > RC bug. > > No, no, please don't. The package should be fixed instead. Why are you > so hasty with removals?!? I can't keep up with you and it is very > frustrating.
I do agree that the package would be useful in Debian. In particular, it allows developers add their own runners to salsa.debian.org. I take issue with the notion of being hasty. For a package to be flagged for removal it must: * have an RC bug that has gone unanswered for more than a year, * be removed from the current stable release, * be removed from the current testing release, * and no reverse dependencies. >From the filing of the RC bug, to the actual removal there is at a very minimum one year and one month. In order to get your package automatically removed, you must not reply to that RC bug at all. Any reply would defer the process. Do you really think it is asking too much to ask you for a status update on how you intend to fix the RC bug about once a year? I agree that the RC bug is difficult to fix here. Doing so likely involves upgrading to a new release which likely incurs getting several other packages past the NEW queue. How about marking the RC bug as blocked by one of the relevant ITP bugs? On the flip side, having a lot of broken packages in unstable is very frustrating to QA people. They are repeatedly faced with problems that are unfixed for years. This initiative practically reduces the workload on QA people and I think it bears a reasonable trade-off. Last but not least, I have no objections to reintroducing the package once it works again. Let's just not keep too much broken stuff in sid. Helmut
