+1 maintenance report

[Brian Murray]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2022 at 09:21:04PM -0400, Sergio Durigan Junior wrote:
> 
> On Friday, July 22 2022, Steve Langasek wrote:
> 
> > Hi Sergio,
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Sorry for the delay.  I was travelling and then on medical leave.
> 
> > I notice in this report that most of the items you worked on requiring
> > source changes have Debian bugs or MPs as references, but there is no
> > mention of what is done to get them resolved in Ubuntu.  We want to push
> > fixes upstream to Debian and minimize unnecessary delta, but the purpose of
> > +1 maintenance is to resolve items in the devel-proposed queue.  As long as
> > these packages remain in -proposed, there's a cost to the team (both in
> > terms of contributing to longer britney run times, and in retreading
> > packages in the queue that have already been looked at).
> 
> As I understand it, we are constantly trying to unblock packages from
> -proposed while at the same time judging whether it makes sense to add
> extra delta that will inevitably be carried forward for some time,
> especially when we are dealing with packages in universe.
> 
> This specific +1 shift was done mid-cycle, and as it turned out I ended
> up working (coincidentally) on issues that also affected the Debian
> packages, so I made a judgment call and considered it better to try and
> fix problems there first knowing that the fixes will eventually reach
> Ubuntu (because none of the packages I worked on had any pre-existing
> delta).
> 
> On top of what I said above, there is also the fact that +1 maintenance
> reports seem to be meant to provide guidance for the person who is going
> to be on shift during the following week.  My report is not the only one
> to mention a lot of Debian work that will eventually need to be followed
> up later.
> 
> > Can you elaborate how each of these package fixes are getting into Ubuntu,
> > and where the progress is being tracked?
> 
> I am not entirely sure I understand the question, but I will try my best
> to answer.
> 
> Each of these fixes are getting into Ubuntu ideally when the respective
> Debian maintainers accept the proposed changes and perform the
> corresponding uploads.  If that doesn't happen before the final freeze,
> I/we can certainly pick the fixes up and upload them to Ubuntu.
> 
> I was unsure whether I should file an Ubuntu-specific bug for each fix,
> so I decided not to do so in order not to pollute our bug tracking
> system.  So, for now, the progress for each of these issues is being
> tracked in the respective links I posted (BTS, salsa, upstream repo,
> etc).  I am subscribed to all of them, and get notified whenever there
> is an update.
> 
> Arguably, I should have probably filed corresponding Ubuntu bugs (tagged
> update-excuse) for each of these issues.  This is a workflow improvement
> that I am considering for the next shift.

Given that there may be a delay of multiple weeks (and subsequently +1
maintenance shifts) between the bug being filed in Debian and the
package being sync'ed I think the best approach is to create an
update-excuse for the issue. Also keep in mind that you don't need to do
all of the work of creating a new bug report, rather you can use the
script import-bug-from-debian which is part of the package
ubuntu-dev-tools and does exactly what you think it would. (Although you
would need to tag it update-excuse.)

Cheers,
--
Brian Murray