Bug#1081194: LLVM 19: lowering severity, and please remove your removal hint

[Sebastian Ramacher]

Control: severity -1 serious

Hi Matthias and LLVM maintainers

On 2024-09-09 20:25:11 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> I think, it's rather unproductive to block newer LLVM versions from testing,
> and now even actively removing them is not very cooperative. If you keep out
> newer versions for the compiler out of testing, you reduce the ability for
> users to test these newer versions.
> 
> From my point of view you are overstretching things here. Please remove the
> removal hint, and let LLVM 19 get more exposure in testing.

Managing testing is one of the core tasks of the release team and as
such these decision was not taken likely. The release team made it clear
during the last view freezes and now also leading up to the trixie
freeze, that we do not think that too many llvm-toolchain versions are
maintainable. The llvm-toolchain maintainers so far agreed with us on
this view (see for example #1068961 when llvm-toolchain-18 was about to
migrate to testing). So I don't think that I am overstepping here.

llvm-toolchain is an essential dependency of many packages (mesa, rustc,
and many others). That however makes it even harder to remove old
versions. We currently have llvm-toolchain-15 (with an unfixed RC bug),
-16 (with an unfixed RC bug), -17 (with an unfixed RC bug) and -18 (with
an unfixed RC bug) in testing and -19 waiting in unstable to migrate. As
we are getting closer to the trixie freeze, we do not intend to keep the
set of llvm-toolchain versions growing without getting old versions
removed first.

To move forward in this regard, we would like to ask the LLVM
maintainers to provide us with a plan for trixie. Which llvm-toolchain
versions are you planning to release with? Which llvm-toolchain version
should be the default version (llvm-defaults is currently pointing to
16). If we are aware of your plans, we can help with getting reverse
dependencies to migrate or in the worst case removed from testing.

Cheers

PS: I am reraising the severity to serious as a release team member. Do
not close the bug or downgrade it again until we have a plan.
-- 
Sebastian Ramacher