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Debian

Debian Freeze Process Update 86

Posted by michael from the cracking-the-whip dept.
snotty6969 writes: "Freeze Update. Anthony Towns sent in an updated report about the Woody freeze process. We're almost into the last week for uploads of base packages. If there are outstanding bugs you'd like to see fixed, provide patches or upload now. We are also getting into the last days for ensuring that standard and task packages get included in the Woody release. At the moment it looks like a lot of packages will be removed from Woody. Among these are a whole bunch of commonly used programs like gpm, Mutt, CVS, Procmail, Apache and Mozilla. People who can fix bugs in these packages and care about them are encouraged to send in patches or upload fixed packages using Anthony's unofficial NMU guidelines."
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Debian Freeze Process Update More

Debian Freeze Process Update

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  • Not fantastic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mike Connell ( 81274 ) on Friday November 23, 2001 @08:45AM (#2603575) Homepage
    I've just switched distros to debian on 3 boxes (home from mandrake, web/mail/cvs/db box at work, and a development machine). I've been really pleased that although it's a bit of a PITA to get set up right, once it's done, it's really done. Yes, apt-get is lovely.

    But if things like apache and mozilla (and for me procmail and cvs) are starting to fall, how is the future looking for debian? The thing I love about it is the the fact that almost everything I use I can just apt-get, and it all fits together. If I had to start getting my own packages a lot, it would really dampen debian's best feature.

    I really hope this is merely a bit of sabre-rattling done in order to stir up some activity before release.

    0.02

    • Re:Not fantastic (Score:3, Informative)

      by compwizrd ( 166184 )
      This is their way of forcing the bugs to be fixed, is all, yes.

    • Re:Not fantastic (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Foochar ( 129133 )
      These things are more call to arms than anything else. For example, I still depend on a working gpm so the threat of it being removed is enough that when I get home tonight I may decide to take a look and see if I can't send the maintainer some clues as to what is going on. It would be pretty hard to justify making a release without things like apache and mozilla, however if they aren't fixed then they will end up delaying the release. Debian has a bad enough history of slipping release dates without more problems to add to it.
    • You can always dist upgrade, I do development on an unstable box and I've yet to have any major issues. I just keep up to date with irc and debian planet to be sure there hasn't been a debain chaos event. The anal standards debian has are a blessing and a curse all at the same time.
      • I've had a couple of Relatively major (if you don't know what your doing and where to look for help)/Relatively minor (if you do know) problems with using unstable, with such great symptoms as xwindows failing to start (someone accidentally put quotes around something they shouldn't have) to gpm failing to detect my mouse and exiting on startup. This happened a couple of days ago, and I haven't figured out exactly what's going wrong - I just told x windows to use the mouse directly.

        I just thought I should warn people that if you run unstable and update it regularly, expect the odd - as in once every couple of months - bug which will take a couple of hours of your time to fix.
        • You have to just go to IRC or DebianPlanet to make sure things aren't broken. For instance, your gpm problem is posted in the news on OPN on #debian, so if you had checked that before you upgraded, you would know the hold the package until it's fixed.
    • They're only to keep Apache, Mozilla, etc. out of the stable version, which most people don't use anyway. If they actually do remove these packages, people who want to use them will compile them themselves, find unofficial packages, or use packages from the testing/unstable trees.
      • As has been said many times before, this is just to get more people to look at the bugs in these packages to get them fixed.


        Also, a ton of people use stable. For a server, say for instance a web server running Apache, stable is great. So people do use Apache on stable, and would need it.

    • But if things like apache and mozilla are starting to fall, how is the future looking for debian?

      Well apart from the fact that release is far away as everybody stated; mozilla-0.9.5 _is_ in woody as of this week ("The force was strong yesterday" -- Wichert Akkerman), the announcement is older.

      But regarding apache, voices have been heard that want to put apache in non-free or even remove it as their license doesn't permit derived works with the same name. Now, if a patched apache debian package qualifies as a derived work was never settled on on debian-legal...

      Michael

  • Who needs attribution, eh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 23, 2001 @09:05AM (#2603635)
    This submission was lifted verbatim from the most recent Debian Weekly News [debian.org]. I just felt someone should point this out, since the submitter didn't seem to consider it worth mentioning.

  • No need for alarm... (Score:5, Informative)

    by HoserHead ( 599 ) on Friday November 23, 2001 @09:13AM (#2603647)
    ...this, as others have mentioned, is more of a wake-up call to maintainers than anything. Apache _will_ ship with Debian 3.0, because maintainers will make it as bug-free as possible, because they care about it. gpm has already been fixed of most (all?) of its bugs. Similarly, we can expect all of the other major packages to be fixed in the next couple of days.

    Don't worry, people. The packages you care about will be in Debian 3.0. (Including mpg321!) We'll make sure of it. :)

  • Debian is the only way that make linux does not suck.

    Now, all I want is a Debian version of FreeBSD!!!
      • Why? Because, frankly, in core features (scheduling, VM, I/O, stability, etc.), the FreeBSD kernel is much better than the Linux kernel.

        However, the flip side is that the FreeBSD kernel is an ancient, unthreaded, monolithic kernel with lagging device support, and non-existent ISV support.

        So, if you don't need to run Java or other closed-source third-party software, and don't need the latest PCCARD or USB dongle, run FreeBSD. Otherwise, run Linux. A Debian environment built on top of the FreeBSD kernel would greatly facilitate switching back and forth as circumstances required.

  • who gives a fuck about apache? (Score:3, Funny)

    by posmon ( 516207 ) on Friday November 23, 2001 @11:57AM (#2603710) Homepage
    just run iis under wine. you'll be laughing!

  • Apache and Mozilla et al? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sketerpot ( 454020 ) <sketerpot@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Friday November 23, 2001 @01:17PM (#2603932)
    Surely they can put things like Apache and Mozilla in a special "Mostly harmless" directory or something. It would be a tragedy to see a linux distro ship without things like these.

  • Debian's standard of quality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Friday November 23, 2001 @01:36PM (#2604039)
    It's good to see that Debian is maintaining their quality even when rushed. Making threats like this is one way to accomplish that - saying to maintainers with broken patches, "if you don't submit a patch, the release will suck and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT".

    And I'm frankly amazed they got Mozilla in in the first place - they hadn't since M18, and with no packaged version Mozilla it was practically impossible to install Galeon.
    • There's always been a version of mozilla in there, it's just been M18 the whole time. I'm not amazed that mozilla 0.9.x got in, because that's something that I'm sure a lot of people have been saying is important, so it's been looked at more closely.
  • This happened to me after an apt-get upgrade last week:

    zgv: relocation error: /usr/lib/libc5-compat/libvga.so.1: undefined symbol: _xstat

    I cant find anything in http://bugs.debian.org and i've only found 1 message about it in muc.lists.debian.user... does this mean svgalib1 is going to be removed or what?
    • Oh man libc5 is old. Why don't you use svgalibg1?
      • Oh man libc5 is old. Why don't you use svgalibg1?

        I didn't choose any lib, the packages do. I apt-get everything, don't build it myself. Stuff like this seems to happen quite often in Debian/Woody, i remember login and telnet not working for weeks a while ago. Also, lilo broke on the last upgrade on another box i use (also Debian/Woody). Fun all around....
    • This happened to me after an apt-get upgrade last week:

      zgv: relocation error: /usr/lib/libc5-compat/libvga.so.1: undefined symbol: _xstat

      I managed to fix this by commenting out /usr/lib/libc5-compat and /lib/libc5-compat
      in /etc/ld.so.conf, and then re-running ldconfig (all this as root).

      Of course, if I find anything on my box that's been linked against libc5, I'll run into problems -- but I've been fine so far. Hopefully this is just a problem with the svgalib packages that will be fixed by a recompile.

      There's probably a better solution, but I couldn't find it :)
      • Hm. now zgv segfaults. ohwell...

        Hopefully this is just a problem with the svgalib packages that will be fixed by a recompile.

        I came upon some vague message about this happening when incompatible versions of gcc are being used?
        • Well, at least it's in the BTS now -- #121142 [debian.org].

          The only solution at the moment is to downgrade -- and it seems like a linking problem (linked with libc6 instead of libc5 on compile).
          • Well bugger... i've downgraded svgalib1, svgalibg1 and svgalib-bin to 1.4.1-2 and i it's still linked to libc6. Do i need to run something afterwards? To quote dr mccoy: "Damned Jim, i'm a user, not a package-juggler!"
            • Ummm... try running ldconfig again as root. This will regenerate the ld.so.cache file, which stores all of the libraries' linking details.

              That's the only help I can offer -- I'm only a user as well, I ain't got no serious Debian mojo going on :)

              (Maybe you'd need to downgrade zgv as well? I don't know about that. Probably not... but if the above fails then give it a try.)

              Let me know how you get on -- if it works I might downgrade as well :) (The commenting things out in ld.so.conf worked for me, and zgv didn't segfault -- there's one segfaulting bug in the BTS against zgv that was blamed on svgalib as well, so maybe you ran into that.)
              • Ummm... try running ldconfig again as root. This will regenerate the ld.so.cache file, which stores all of the libraries' linking details.

                Yeah, i already did that... wasn't the problem though; when i downgraded the symlink to libvga.so.1 wasnt updated and was still pointing to the newer version. Once i corrected it, zgv started working again! Now let's see how long it takes before there's a proper solution...
        • BTW, maybe try a couple of other packages that use svgalib and see if the problem is there or in zgv. If they act up as well, zgv is not to blame :)
  • I like most people i know have my sources.list entries all pointing to 'testing'. So when woody moves "down" to stable, we'll all be getting a new dist.

    I know SID stays at unstable so what will the new dists (or Debian 4) be called?
    and when/how will this work do we stay with woody till a new testing branch is ready or will we be inline with SID for a bit?

    I dont realy care about what goes into stable it packages are just too old for a desktop (great for servers and production sys) I am very interested in hearing about the next debian, beyond woody.
    • When sid was released, I was using woody, and had 'unstable' in my sources.list line. I ran my regular apt-get upgrade, and lo and behold, I suddenly had sid, without asking for it.

      This was a concern at first, but sid hasn't given me any major problems.

      In response to your question, when potato moved out of unstable, it went to frozen, then to stable. Woody was released as the new unstable dist very shortly afterwards, iirc.
  • When was Debian 2.2 first released?

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