> > I think it is better to revert the patch, and just > > document the fact that -c is always provided to the invoked shell > > Return to broken state and explicitly document that > Debian has broken su? Please, don't do this!
Well, we need some decision here and here I come with my DD hat. I have followed the work on this bug and, first of all, I want to thank you guys for the involved time and the neurones your burned on that case...:-) Now for the decision : it seems that the change, even if justified by technical reasons, is very likely to break other packages and maybe as well some system administrators scripts, badly written or not. We cannot afford this. Debian has a longstanding reputation of stability (YES, even unstable) and reliability. Breaking things without warning is *not* the Debian Way and this is exactly what we did with this change (of course, non intentionnally). So, we have to leave time to our fellow maintainers to fix their scripts/packages/work/whatever. We also have to find the better way to do so. I have some ideas but others may pop up in the future. So, first of all, we REVERT THE PATCH. Don't take it badly, Alex, nothing pro or against you but this is, I think, the less worse decision. The bug will be reopened, as a reminder, even if we fix su. Then we communicate with other Debian developers so that scripts which assume the "incorrect" behaviour are fixed. If this involves a transition (ie fixes cannot be made unless we change su), we organise it. Being the origin of the needed changes, this is our duty. To achieve this, we need a document which explains the behaviour changes. This document MUST be as simple as possible and clearly explain the issues, even for people who are not very aware of su internals. All this (managing the change) will be made AFTER we merge with upstream. We will make an urgent upload with reveted su behaviour and Nicolas documentation in the man page. This change will also include the FTBFS fix for kFreeBSD and Hurd. I will work on it at Debconf if I can't sleep..:-)
