Bug#747363: Upgrade troubles with Perl

[Niko Tyni]

On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 12:33:58AM +0200, Christoph Biedl wrote:

> Second, there's a regression in the handling of in-memory file handle.
> Broke my code when giving it a first try on jessie. And I am still
> *very* upset why #747363 should be anything below RC.

I find arguments about bug severity rather fruitless but I guess I should
comment here.

That bug is about a limited set of modules bundled with the Perl core
(IO::Uncompress::*) behaving wrong in certain circumstances (when their
output file handle is an in-memory one.) 

Your justification for the initial severity:critical was that the bug
"breaks unrelated software", but as I explained, programs using the module
(directly or indirectly) are not unrelated software. Severity:critical
is for things that are worse than this bug by an order of magnitude.

Next, the bug doesn't make the whole perl/perl-modules package "unusable
or mostly so" (severity:grave). Even the modules in question are mostly
usable as long as their output is something else than an in-memory file
handle, and there's an easy workaround as noted in the BTS.

That leaves severity:serious, essentially "in the package maintainer's
or release manager's opinion, makes the package unsuitable for release."
As maintainer, I think I'd put the bug in that category if it was a
regression in general handling of in-memory file handles in the Perl
interpreter, or if it was making IO::Uncompress::* totally unusable.

Please note that a non-RC severity doesn't mean wontfix. I expect we'll
backport an upstream fix as soon as soon as one is released.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org