[Debian-astro-maintainers] Bug#998703: src:gnuastro: fails to migrate to testing for too long: ftbfs on mips64el

[Mohammad Akhlaghi]

Dear Paul,

Thank you very much for noticing this and marking the bug as fixed. 
Also, I really appreciate the great explanation of the significance of 
such situations, I completely agree.

The delay originated from the Debian version freezing: version 0.15 of 
Gnuastro came in that time slot (so it couldn't be updated in Debian). 
By the time the freeze was lifted, Gnuastro had significantly grown (and 
almost ready for version 0.16). But we pushed version 0.15 only to keep 
continuity.

It was only after uploading version 0.15 that we noticed the bug in 
'mips64el'. So we fixed it and pushed it with all the other bug fixes 
that had been found as version 0.15.54. Because the library had changed 
in this time, the new upload went to the NEW stack (on September 22nd). 
However, it was stuck in the NEW list for about 1.5 months (with one 
rejection due to bad copyright statement that was immediately fixed and 
re-submitted). Ultimately it was approved this morning!

Version 0.16 of Gnuastro is already released upstream [1], so as soon as 
Gnuastro 0.15.54 passes on all CPU architectures in the experimental 
branch [2], we will upload version 0.16 to 'testing'.

Thanks again,
Mohammad

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnuastro/2021-10/msg00000.html
[2] 
https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=gnuastro&suite=experimental