Bug#1065416: requesting input on recent posts to #1065416

I am re-adding [email protected], and now also [email protected]. I 
still don't see this as an issue that the Technical Committee should 
decide. This is aggressively confrontational behavior of one of the 
Debian kernel maintainers, and it should be handled as that.

On 15.05.24 14:15, Sean Whitton wrote:
> Hello Matthias,
> 
> There have been a number of posts to #1065416 and it hasn't heard from
> you in some time.  The Technical Committee would like to help, but it is
> difficult to see how we could do so without input from your side.

My position didn't change, and I didn't see any efforts in resolving the 
uninstallability issue, and the buildability of the gcc-cross packages.

> The ownership issue seems tractable.  On the one hand, the binary
> package names clearly belong to your package, but on the other hand, the
> files that are installed seem like they belong to Linux.

I doubt that "belong to Linux" opinion. The files are made available via 
the linux-source package, and then used to build new binary packages, 
clearly marked by the Built-Using attribute.

I'm also not considering files contained in the binutils-source and 
gcc-N-source packages as belonging to the binutils and GCC maintainers. 
And I'm certainly not doing any changes that make the non-linux cross 
toolchains uninstallable as one of the Debian Kernel maintainers is 
doing that here. Just providing these files in a -source package
doesn't make you an owner for these files in packages using these
-source packages.

The same way, it's not ok to force uninstallabilty of the cross 
compilers down everybody's throat, without seeking an agreement.

> If you could respond to the recent messages, we may be able to get a
> grip on some of the problems and make suggestions.

My first priority is to get the gcc cross compilers targeting the 
various linux and hurd architectures installable and usable again.

- the cross-toolchain-base and cross-toolchain-base-ports packages
   were uploaded twice to address the linux-source and glibc-source
   changes.
   The build conflicts against the linux-libc-dev-*-cross packages
   had to be temporarily dropped for that.

- As the second step, I already requested to drop the provides
   linux-libc-dev-*-cross from the new linux-libc-dev package.
   If the availability of some architecture-specific files should
   be announced, this can be announced in a non-confrontational
   way. The -cross suffix is nothing that belongs to the linux
   source package. Providing names like
   linux-libc-dev-<DEB_HOST_ARCH> serves the same purpose.

   This would make the cross compiler packages installable again.

- If that is not done, I will have to rename the
   linux-libc-dev-*-cross packages, needing a pass through
   the new queue.

   This would make the cross compiler packages installable again,
   if the previous item is not acted on.

- I am accepting the offer given in
   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1065416#108
   to take over the linux-libc-dev package.
   I will start working on that at DebCamp and DebConf.

I am not ok to do changes, which first break stuff, and then having to 
repair things later again.  That's why I don't want to go the road 
started here.

  - Bastian's assertion that the current linux-libc-dev package doesn't
    break anything in the archive, doesn't say anything.  These bits
    are just not used by anything in the archive.

  - With Helmut's (unrelated) gcc-for-{build,host} changes, we saw a
    lot of breakage, even after telling me these were tested.  In the
    end it took me more than 40 working hours to fix stuff during the
    end-of-year break integrating these changes.  I am fine spending
    time to integrate such changes for cross build ability in a
    Debian specific multiarch environment. Both Bastian and Helmut are
    not GCC upstream contributors, and as seen in
    https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1069066
    people are trying to go the easy way pushing stuff in Debian, that
    they don't want to spend the time to integrate upstream.

In the end it's me having to fix issues for the Debian packages. I would 
like doing things in a non-breaking way.

As you can see from the commits for the gcc-for-{build,host} changes, 
these were done around the same time as this controversial 
linux-libc-dev upload. So while having to fix one messy set of patches 
from Helmut, Bastian assumes a no-reply on the linux-libc-dev issue as 
an OK, that's odd.

Matthias