Bug#1077764: Ruling request on os-release specification implementation

On Sat, 3 Aug 2024 at 11:20, Paul Gevers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> On 03-08-2024 11:58, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> >> On the use of tpu:
> >> Personally, until now I fail to see enough value of being able to
> >> distinguish unstable and testing to give the package carrying
> >> /etc/os-release a permanent exception via tpu.
> >
> > Thanks for chiming in - assuming for a moment that it is decided that
> > the change will be implemented, do you see any technical obstacles in
> > using t-p-u as proposed?
>
> The biggest reason I know against using tpu is that it currently isn't
> receiving the same amount of testing (be it automatic (autopkgtest,
> piuparts, in the future reproducibility) or human) as
> unstable-to-testing migrations receive. For the automatic part, that's
> obviously a solvable problem (and already on my todo list for YEARS),
> but currently not the case. It also *always* requires human intervention
> by the Release Team. Another issue issue with tpu is that binNMU'ing is
> more difficult (I assume that's probably not very often relevant in the
> current case). I recall there are more issues with tpu, but I have
> forgotten them. When I find them, I'll add them.

Thank you. For this particular case: there would be 2 uploads for
every cycle, one at the end to add version numbers (this already
happens, no?), one at the beginning to change the VERSION_CODENAME. I
think from the point of view of requiring manual labour it should be
pretty lightweight compared to the current workload of managing
stable-p-u, at 2 uploads to review once every ~2 years, right?

For the binNMU side, this would be an Architecture: all package, so it
doesn't apply I think, right? It wouldn't be subject to any binary
transition for library bumps or things like that. In the current
proposal I am putting forward it's a binary arch: all with a single
fixed arch-independent text file in /usr/lib/ and a single fixed
symlink in /etc/ to the file in /usr/lib, no maintainer scripts
whatsoever, no dependencies.