SRUs solely for dep8 updates

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Robie,

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 05:02:34PM +0000, Robie Basak wrote:
> Dimitri uploaded a dep8 fix for dovecot in bug 1757265.

> I've always been reluctant to accept SRUs for things that are not user
> impacting.

> For consistency, please could we decide a policy on this?

To understand, are you looking for consistency because you think the policy
should be to reject autopkgtest-only fixes and you don't want uploaders to
shop their upload around to multiple SRU team members to get the answer they
want?  Or is it that you think it's unfair to uploaders and a waste of their
time to have done work that might then be rejected?  Or some other reason?

> To be clear, this isn't about SRU paperwork. Normally I'd happily accept
> a bundled dep8 fix in an SRU with no specific bug for the dep8 fix
> itself. I'm asking whether we should accept SRUs to fix this kind of
> thing even though there's no actual user impact, instead of asking for
> it to be bundled with the next SRU or security fix.

My loosely-held view is that autopkgtest-only SRUs are:
 - not a priority to upload in general
 - not something I would tend to reject.

Particularly for a case of an autopkgtest that has regressed via
security/SRU, I think it matters to clean these up, as not doing so means we
lose any information about whether *other* SRUs are causing user-affecting
regressions in that package.

Bundling the autopkgtest fix with the next SRU of dovecot doesn't provide
this protection, because the next SRU of systemd (for example) could break
dovecot without us noticing because of the ignored already-failing
autopkgtests.

> Separately, we currently don't have a good place to keep such pending
> fixes. We should perhaps define one.

Does the Server Team's git importer provide for this as part of the branch
schema?

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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