[lug] Install/Fix Fest on Sat.

[Nate Duehr]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2000 at 04:10:56PM -0700, Robert L. Harris wrote:
> Has anyone found a location for an Install/Fix fest for Saturday after
> the W2K release?  We have a VERY good selling point in that M$ has already
> admitted there are 65000+ bugs in the first release...  Now that's 
> quality.

No idea about a location, but the Debian Linux bugtracking system shows
about 300 release-critical bugs outstanding today with over 4500
packages available in .deb format.  Not too shabby.  I couldn't find
any stats on total bugs, I'm sure it's high, but there's a lot of
"wishlist" bugs filed in the system.

A lot of these bugs are "referred upstream" also, since the bug tracking
system at Debian is designed to catch bugs, but the package maintainer
many times is not the upstream code source.  (Naturally.)

Add to it that all of the .deb packages are on the Debian mirrors, the
mirrors use the highly efficient "rsync" in order to be good net
citizens, and you can install ANY package with all dependencies by
typing "apt-get update; apt-get install <packagename>" as root, and I've
honestly learned to really dislike the RPM way of doing things...
searching through freshmeat for something is rapidly becoming only an
exercise for the "What should I package next?" evenings!  :)

But back to the topic at hand, it's pretty darn neat to see people in
their "spare" time can come up with something better than hundreds of
paid programmers at a corporation.

Anyone know of a bug-tracking system for RPM's anywhere?  I haven't
found one, and it's one of my pet-peeves with RedHat.  They tend to have
less public information about known problems with their software.  They
*must* be running a bug-tracking system internal to RedHat, but I've
never seen anywhere that it's made public.  (I could be very wrong,
however.)

Of course, the main distribution on RedHat doesn't have anywhere near
4500 packages... for that you need RawHide and the PowerTools... so
maybe those aren't checked as closely as the main set of RPM's?  

Don't know.  Anyway, really just wanted to get the news out that
Debian's next release is getting closer all the time!  :)

Next release, hopefully more work goes into the installation tools.
That seems to be where the five minute reviews from "professional"
reviewers seem to focus on, and it gets a thumbs-down from even the
Debian folks.  Problem is the darn package system works so well, you
only ever see the installer ONE time.  After that, when a new version is
released, it's simply "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" after
editing one text file to upgrade a live system from one version to the
next.  Services are restarted as needed, etc.  Only a replacement kernel
package requires a reboot... nice.

G'night all,
-- 
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>

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