Bug#826090: mate-terminal broken after todays upgrade (debian testing)

[Santiago Vila]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2016, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

> On 06/02/2016 09:25 AM, Le Déchaîné wrote:
> > Looks like apt-get is mixing packages.
> > mate-terminal-common is at 1.14.0-1 in testing.
> > pluma is at 1.14.0-1 in testing.
> > mate-desktop is still at 1.12.1-1 in testing, not available for testing yet.
> > 
> > I'm guessing this is the problem.
> 
> No, the problem is that you don't understand how testing/unstable works [1].
> 
> Again, PLEASE STOP IT. Those aren't bugs what you are seeing, those are
> the common artifacts that you are experiencing when using testing/unstable.

Well, I have to disagree strongly here.

It seems that it's you who don't understand how *testing* works
(or how we would like it to work).

The testing ditribution is supposed to be in an always releseable state.

If something does not work in *testing*, then of course it is a bug,
and you don't have to blame the submitter for that.

Reporting bugs about things which do not work in *testing* is a
completely acceptable use of the bug system, it's not abuse in any
way.

> > [1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825791#31

The link provided does only talk about unstable, and it's completely ok
as an explanation of why things sometimes break in unstable.

But this is *testing* what we are talking about.

To avoid what you call "artifacts" happening in testing we have a
thing called "transitions" and that's also why we sometimes submit
serious bugs against packages or group of packages in unstable just to
avoid them entering testing when they are not ready for testing.

But apparently you people didn't do anything like that (or you didn't
do it right enough) and this time packages which do not work together
have entered testing at the same time.

Again, this is not supposed to happen in *testing*.


For the record: As of today, none of the following source packages in
stretch may be built in stretch due to unmet build-dependencies:

caja-extensions
engrampa
eom
mate-indicator-applet
mate-netbook
mate-power-manager
mate-terminal
mate-user-share
mate-utils
pluma
python-caja

Now you can say that I also don't understand how testing/unstable
works but that would be really funny indeed:

Packages in testing MUST build in testing. This is non-negotiable,
it's in the list of things that release managers consider release
critical, and it's also one of the reasons packages are sometimes
removed from testing.

To summarize: There seems to be a *real* mess in the MATE packages in
testing, and the list of packages I can't build is a clear evidence of that.

Please try to find the real root of the problem, how it happened, and
how we could have avoided it to happen in *testing* by using serious
bugs wisely, and please do not blame users for submitting bugs about
things that do not work in testing, because testing is supposed to
work without "artifacts".

Thanks.