Bug#818990: Is it really a flint problem?

[Julien Puydt]

Hi,

On 19/04/2016 12:22, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 10:04:31AM +0200, Julien Puydt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> (1) according to:
>>   https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=flint&suite=sid
>> the version 2.5.2-3 of flint built perfectly on amd64.
>
> yeah, that's a past tense.
>
>> (2) more recently (yesterday) :
>>   https://buildd.debian.org/status/package.php?p=flint&suite=experimental
>> the version 2.5.2-4 of flint built perfectly on amd64.
>
> that's a different version.
>
>> (3) many tests on different amd64 systems (three by myself, and a few others
>> from people on #debian-mentors) didn't have any issue with 2.5.2-4 either.
>
> that's still a different version.
>
> Don't try to mix versions thinking it's always the same.
>
>> This suggest the package isn't at fault and the rare systems where the
>> failures occurred should be double-checked for the real root of the problem.
>
> Indeed, with the very same chroot, I can build -4, but -3 FTBFS.
>
> Evidently, this:
>
> -        \left|\frac{a_{n-2}}{a_n}\right|^{\frac{1}{2}}, \dots
> +        \left|\frac{a_{n-2}}{a_n}\right|^{\frac{1}{2}}, \dotsc
>
> Is enough to fix this bug, and it also makes sense, given that the
> failure log we pointed to you fails while doing latex stuff.
>
> I'd say: mark this bug as fixed in that version, add the number to the
> changelog and upload to unstable (why in first case that one went to
> experimental?)
>

Mattia, the original #818990 was a FTBFS running the unit tests of the 
2.5.2-3 package. When investigating this FTBFS, I found another failure, 
within the documentation. I added a patch fixing this documentation 
issue to get 2.5.2-4 (will be in next upstream too since I forwarded, of 
course). That is due to some changes in texlive, which made a typo turn 
into an error. And it is for this 2.5.2-4 that Chris still complained, 
and that I counted you among the two reporters of FTBFS.

So now the situation is :
- Chris finds the package faulty within the reproducible framework ;
- every other compilation test of 2.5.2-4 was a success.

Perhaps this bug report should be re-assigned to another package?

Snark on #debian-science