SQL::Statement unusable in major Linux distributions

[H.Merijn Brand]

On Tue, 3 Nov 2009 19:04:23 -0500, Jonathan Yu
<jonathan.i.yu at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Paul:
> 
> From the perspective of Debian in particular, I have the following
> statement to make.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 5:49 PM, Paul Beardsell <paul at beardsell.com> wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> >
> > * It is beneficial to the Perl community (developers and users) that bugs
> > are held centrally. I am sure this is also the position of the Perl
> > community. The discoverer of a bug cannot be responsible for contacting each
> > distro.  Distro maintainers cannot independently triage *all* bugs in all
> > the packages they include.  They need (we need!) "upstream", a central
> > repository.  rt.cpan.org has the facility to record bugs against older but
> > still current versions.  It should be used as I think Jesse Vincent also
> > intended, for the benefit of the wider community, as this central
> > repository.
> >
> [snip]
> 
> In Debian, we like to have everything that affects our packages filed
> in our bug tracker (the Debian Bug Tracking System). From time to time
> in the past, we have missed these bugs (ie, not forwarded them
> upstream), and this has been problematic for people. However, our bug
> tracker is entirely open and anyone is free to look at our packages
> and forward relevant issues upstream.
> 
> One particular point I'd like to make is that sometimes bugs only
> exist downstream due to some modifications we've made in order to
> package things or for some other reason. As a result, it doesn't seem
> fair to bother the upstream maintainers about issues which are
> Debian-specific, or Fedora-specific, for example.
> 
> Therefore, we ask that our users always file bugs against the Debian
> packages; we will coordinate with upstream appropriately to get things
> fixed, taking care to forward the bug and make whatever arrangements
> necessary to fix the package.
> 
> In general, the CPAN Request Tracker has been where we forward most of
> our bug reports. Some maintainers do not like to use the RT system,
> and we have to respect their wishes. In that case, we file bugs by
> whatever means the maintainers tell us to in the POD of their
> packages, or otherwise in the RT or via direct mail.
> 
> In defense of the SQL::Statement maintainers and all, I think if there
> are critical issues with older releases, they should be brought to the
> attention of each distro. Debian has policies for when things get
> synchronized between unstable <-> testing, and things that can be
> updated in stable. Things like security fixes and critical fixes are
> candidates for patches in stable, however this is the responsibility
> of Debian/Fedora/etc and not of the CPAN Maintainers.
> 
> I urge you to let the CPAN maintainers do what they do best -- produce
> good software. Others (including those that package these modules) are
> responsible for distro-specific issues, and I encourage you to file
> bugs in those packages.

Thanks for sharing your clear views from the Debian point of view, and I
I wholeheartedly agree. Not only for perl Modules but also for the CORE,
and I know things have been (very) bad in the past  (in both directions)
regarding up-/downstream changes to perl. Things have improved though.

> Cheers,
> 
> Jonathan

-- 
H.Merijn Brand  http://tux.nl      Perl Monger  http://amsterdam.pm.org/
using & porting perl 5.6.2, 5.8.x, 5.10.x, 5.11.x on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00,
11.11, 11.23, and 11.31, OpenSuSE 10.3, 11.0, and 11.1, AIX 5.2 and 5.3.
http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/           http://www.test-smoke.org/
http://qa.perl.org      http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/