Bug#1040001: transition: r-base
Hi Paul,
Am Sat, Jul 01, 2023 at 05:21:16PM +0200 schrieb Paul Gevers:
> > So per upstream ("R Core" for short), this is clearly on the package
> > side. There is no ABI/API incompatibility: R offers graphics functions new
> > functionality, to use it one needs a rebuild _if a package decides to stop
> > and die on mismatch_.
I'd like to point out that "one needs a rebuild" is something else if
one installs a CRAN package manually or if we upload a Debian package.
A Debian package has to "survive" a set of tests (and here we
continuously disagree but right now in this actual case it has proven to
be necessary) and pass a migration procedure in a dependency tree of
packages which is just more complex than "just rebuild".
> > I so filed three bug reports last weekend against three such packages
... and I told you that this list of three packages was incomplete. By
chance I had rebuild two other packages that needed the rebuild and some
autopkgtest I was running uncovered that vdiffr simply slipped through
your attention. That's perfectly human - and since its human I'm in
favour of a technical solution which avoids such manual digging inside
the package pool.
Besides this such technical things to my experience these issues always
go with some well known pattern of "social friction" which is
demotivating for all sides. I'd like to reduce these friction points
to a minimum if there is some technical solution.
> > requesting a simple rebuild as that is in fact all it takes. (And
> > missed one that was added.) These were quickly rebuilt.
>
> While this may be true, in Debian we require that such packages express this
> relation. I understand that that's what we achieve with the proposal of
> Andreas. "Just rebuilding" is often the wrong solution (in Debian) if it
> doesn't express the relation properly.
Fully ACK.
> > So let me know what you think. If the release team thinks we must rebuild
> > across 1100 r-* packages (of which likely 400-500 are Architecture: any)
> > then I will of course work with you.
>
> I recognize that at this moment we might not need it to straighten things
> out, because of all the new version uploads, but I believe it's the right
> solution for the future, as this seems to be a recurring topic.
IMHO its not a solved case. The R pkg team is creating a list of packages
that are not up to date and a list of bugs which you can see in the second
table of [1]. This page lists
$ grep serious outdated_r-packages.txt | grep -c 4.3.1
45
serious bugs that are all caused by the non-transition while we should
have done one. That's pretty annoying for the people who need to do the
work (in this case basically me).
I would really welcome if we do it the right way even now, specifically
since there is a patch for bug #1040038 that implements a solution that
should help for now and in future.
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] https://salsa.debian.org/r-pkg-team/maintenance-utilities/-/blob/master/outdated_r-packages.txt
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