>>>>> "aj" == Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
aj> or overloaded with work, or, for that matter, fixing compromised Debian
aj> servers -- do you think it's desirable and possible to:
aj> * for confirmed bugs with a known fix, upload a fixed package
aj> within a day or two of the patch been sent to the bug log
No, I don't think it is always desirable to do this and certainly my
maintinance style doesn't work well with this methodology. The
problem is there is a fairly high fixed cost to building, testing and
doing release management for a package. It takes me about an
afternoon to do a PAM or OpenAFS release even if I change one line.
OK, for a one line change I can probably get that down to two hours or
so.
It's a lot easier for me if I batch bugs together and if I did not do
so, I'd be even more behind than I already am.
I certainly think that expediting package uploads for RC bugs is a
critical responsibility I as a maintainer have.
But even if someone else claims to have tested a bug, I'm going to be
the one signing the package; I'm taking responsibility. So I must
spend the time necessary to understand the fix, confirm the fix and do
the release engineering cruft I do for every release.
Clearly this can be taken too far; pam is an excellent example of a
package where I've let things slip enough that I'm having difficulty
digging myself out of the hole.
But I think dealing with normal bugs with confirmed fixes in a month
or two is much more reasonable than a day or two. I'd feel
differently if Debian was my primary job or if I found a style of
maintaining packages that worked well for me with this goal.
