Re: Should alpha|beta|rc releases be watched by uscan?

[Jeremy Bícha <jeremy.bicha@canonical.com>]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 12:11 PM Gunnar Hjalmarsson <gunnarhj@debian.org> wrote:
> There seems to be a generic watch file for multiple GNOME projects
> (attached). That file does not make uscan see alpha|beta|rc releases.
>
> Would it be desirable to watch also such releases?
> …
> would make uscan see everything. Or possibly a compromise would be
> better. Only rc? Or rc and beta?

I think the Debian GNOME team is in agreement that watching for alpha
releases isn't very helpful since we don't generally package those but
we do package stable point releases that are released later than the
alphas.

Watching for rc releases seems useful since there aren't many changes
from rc to the .0 release. Any bugs identified then and reported might
be fixed in time for .0 and benefit everyone instead of waiting
several weeks until a .1 release.

That leaves beta. Last year, we did package the beta releases and
often even pushed them to Unstable. I support making the watch files
more usable to maintainers and I think watching for beta releases is
more useful than not.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha