X-Git-Url: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ianmdlvl/git?p=developers-reference.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=developers-reference.sgml;h=675097fb6405008e5e2c8951ca5884a061b034af;hp=ba8b075a043559a7f07ba79b040c261196e15892;hb=b191c0ce93fe448e0573be2ad4ed324f453b659e;hpb=aaed407b0c363c49306aff53515e6f88e807bd4a diff --git a/developers-reference.sgml b/developers-reference.sgml index ba8b075..675097f 100644 --- a/developers-reference.sgml +++ b/developers-reference.sgml @@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ %commondata; - + @@ -21,7 +21,8 @@
+Packages are usually installed into the `testing' distribution after they +have undergone some degree of testing in unstable.
-The scripts that update the testing distribution are run each
-day after the installation of the updated packages. They generate the
-
-The inclusion of a package from unstable is conditional on
-the following:
-
-
-
-To find out whether a package is progressing into testing or not, see the
-testing script output on the
-The
-Sometimes, some packages never enter testing because the set of
-inter-relationship is too complicated and cannot be sorted out
-by the scripts. In that case, the release manager must be
-contacted, and he will force the inclusion of the packages.
-
-In general, please refer to the
@@ -1054,7 +1010,7 @@ New software which isn't likely to damage your system can go directly into
An alternative to experimental is to use your personal web space
on people.debian.org.
-Please consider to use the option
-The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
-explained in . However, the release manager may stop the testing
-scripts when he wants to freeze the distribution. In that case, you may want to
-upload to testing-proposed-updates to provide fixed packages during the freeze.
+
-Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed, they
-have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you'd better have a good
-reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is in the
-release manager's eyes, you should read the instructions that he regularly
-gives on &email-debian-devel-announce;.
-
-You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can update your
-packages through unstable. If you can't (for example because you have a
-newer development version in unstable), you may use it but it is recommended to ask
-the authorization of the release manager before.
+Please see the information in the
+
+Packages are usually installed into the `testing' distribution after they
+have undergone some degree of testing in unstable.
+
+They must be in sync on all architectures and
+mustn't have dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also have to
+have generally no known release-critical bugs at the time they're
+installed into testing.
+This way, `testing' should always be close to being a release candidate.
+Please see below for details.
+
+The scripts that update the testing distribution are run each
+day after the installation of the updated packages. They generate the
+
+The inclusion of a package from unstable is conditional on
+the following:
+
+To find out whether a package is progressing into testing or not, see the
+testing script output on the
+The
+Sometimes, some packages never enter testing because the set of
+inter-relationship is too complicated and cannot be sorted out
+by the scripts. See below for details.
+
+Some further dependency analysis is shown on
+
+For the testing migration script, "outdated" means: There are different
+versions in unstable for the release architectures (except for the
+architectures in fuckedarches; fuckedarches is an list of architectures
+that don't keep up (in update_out.py), but currently, it's empty).
+"outdated" has nothing whatsoever to do with the architectures this package
+has in testing.
+
+Consider this example:
+
+
+ foo | alpha | arm
+---------+-------+----
+testing | 1 | -
+unstable | 1 | 2
+
+
+The package is out of date on alpha in unstable, and will not go to
+testing. And removing foo from testing would not help at all, the package
+is still out of date on alpha, and will not propagate to testing.
+
+However, if ftp-master removes a package in unstable (here on arm):
+
+
+foo | alpha | arm | hurd-i386
+---------+-------+-----+----------
+testing | 1 | 1 | -
+unstable | 2 | - | 1
+
+
+In this case, the package is up to date on all release architectures in
+unstable (and the extra hurd-i386 doesn't matter, as it's not a release
+architecture).
+
+Sometimes, the question is raised if it is possible to allow packages in
+that are not yet built on all architectures: No. Just plainly no. (Except
+if you maintain glibc or so.)
+
+
+Sometimes, a package is removed to allow another package in: This happens
+only to allow _another_ package to go in, that's ready in every other
+sense. Consider e.g. that a conflicts with the new version of b; than a may
+be removed to allow b in.
+
+Of course, there is another reason to remove a package from testing: It's
+just too buggy (and having a single RC-bug is enough to be in this state).
+
+
+A situation that is not handled very well by britney is if package a
+depends on the new version of package b, and vice versa.
+
+An example of this is:
+
+
+ | testing | unstable
+--+-----------------+------------
+a | 1; depends: b=1 | 2; depends: b=2
+b | 1; depends: a=1 | 2; depends: a=2
+
+
+Package a is not considered for update, and package b also not.
+
+Currently, this requires some manual hinting from the release masters.
+Please, send mail to debian-release@lists.debian.org if that happens to
+one of your packages.
+
+
+
+Generally, there is nothing that the status of a package in testing means
+for transition of the next version from unstable to testing, with two
+exceptions: If the RC-bugginess of the package goes down, it may go in
+even if it is still RC-buggy. The second exception is if the version
+of the package in testing is out of sync on the different arches: Then
+any arch might just upgrade to the version of the source package;
+however, this can happen only if the package was previously forced
+through, or the arch is in fuckedarches.
+
+In summary this means: The only influence that a package being in testing
+has on a new version of the same package is that the new version might
+go in easier.
+
+
+If you are interested in details, this is how britney works:
+
+The packages are looked at to determine whether they are valid
+candidates. This gives the "update excuses". The most common reasons
+why a package is not considered are too young, RC-bugginess and out of
+date on some arches. For this part, the release managers have hammers
+of any size to force britney to consider a package. (Also, the base
+freeze is coded in that part of britney.) (There is a similar thing
+for binary-only updates, but this is not described here. If you're
+interessted in that, please use the code.)
+
+Now, the more complex part happens: Britney tries to update testing with
+the valid candidates; first, each package alone, and then larger and even
+larger sets of packages together. Each try is accepted if sarge is not
+more uninstallable after the update as before. (Before and after this part,
+some hints are processed; but as only release masters can hint, this is
+probably not so important for you.)
+
+If you want to see more details, you can look it up on
+merkel:/org/ftp.debian.org/testing/update_out/ (or there in
+~aba/testing/update_out to see a setup with a smaller packages file). Via
+web, it's at
+The hints are available via
+The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
+explained above. However, in some cases, it is necessary to upload
+packages built only for testing. For that, you may want to
+upload to testing-proposed-updates.
+
+Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed, they
+have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you'd better have a good
+reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is in the
+release manager's eyes, you should read the instructions that he regularly
+gives on &email-debian-devel-announce;.
+
+You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can update your
+packages through unstable. If you can't (for example because you have a
+newer development version in unstable), you may use it but it is recommended to ask
+the authorization of the release manager before. Even if a package is
+frozen, updates through unstable are possible, if the upload via unstable
+does not pulls an new dependency in.
+
+Version numbers are usually selected by adding the codename of the testing
+distribution and a incrementing number, like 1.2sarge1 for the first upload
+through testing-proposed-updates of the package version 1.2.
+
+
+
+
+
+All bugs of some higher severities are by default considered release-critical; currently, these are critical, grave and serious bugs.
+
+Such bugs are presumed to have an impact on the chances that the package will be released with the stable release of Debian: in general, if a package has open release-critical bugs filed on it, it won't get into "testing", and consequently won't be released in "stable".
+
+The "testing" bug count for a package is considered to be roughly the bug count at the last point when the "testing" version equalled the "unstable" version. The bugs tagged woody or sarge will not be counted. Bugs with the sid tag will be counted, though.
+
+
+
+The structure of the distribution archives is such that they can only contain one version of a package; a package is defined by its name. So, when the source package acmefoo is installed into "testing", along with its binary packages acme-foo-bin, acme-bar-bin, libacme-foo1 and libacme-foo-dev, the old version is removed.
+
+However, the old version may have provided a binary package with an old soname of a library, such as libacme-foo0. Removing the old acmefoo will remove libacme-foo0, which will break any packages which depend on it.
+
+Evidently, this mainly affects packages which provide changing sets of binary packages in different versions (in turn, mainly libraries). However, it will also affect packages upon which versioned dependencies have been declared of the ==, <= or << varieties.
+
+When the set of binary packages provided by a source package change in this way, all the packages that depended on the old binaries will have to be updated to depend on the new binaries instead. Because installing such a source package into "testing" breaks all the packages that depended on it in "testing", some care now has to be taken: all the depending packages must be updated and ready to be installed themselves so that they won't be broken, and, once everything is ready, manual intervention by the release manager or an assistant is normally required.
+
+If you are having problems with complicated groups of packages like this, contact debian-devel or debian-release for help.
+
Deborphan is a program helping users to detect which packages can be safely
-removed from the system, ie the ones that have no packages depending on
+removed from the system, i.e. the ones that have no packages depending on
them. The default operation is to search only within the libs and oldlibs
sections, to hunt down unused libraries. But when passed the right argument,
it tries to catch other useless packages.
-For example, with --guess-dummy, tries to search all transitionnal packages
+For example, with --guess-dummy, tries to search all transitional packages
which were needed for upgrade but which can now safely be removed. For that,
it looks for the string "dummy" or "transitional" in their short
description.
-So, when you are creating ssuch a package, please make sure to add this text
+So, when you are creating such a package, please make sure to add this text
to your short description. If you are looking for example, just run:
-Note that
+For more informations see
+
+
+