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piuparts.debian.org: Frequently Asked Questions

Q. piuparts logs are long and cluttered with debug output - how do you read them?
A) Usually it's best to read them bottom up, as errors happen at the end.
Q. Whom should I contact if I think I found a false positive?

A) debian-qa@lists.debian.org - but please read the complete FAQ before doing so.

Q. What does a depends of ''circular dependency'' mean?

A) The package fai-client depends on perl and perl depends on perl-modules and perl-modules depends on perl, thus piuparts doesn't know which package to test first. This is a bug/missing feature in piuparts, because piuparts could just schedule perl and perl-modules for testing at the same time, as circular depends are usually from the same source package anyway. AFAIK there are only three circular depends in the archive: the perl one, xserver-xorg and xserver-xorg-core and another new one from KDE4.

Q. Some packages (for example [[http://piuparts.debian.org/sid/source/i/ilohamail.html|ilohamail]] ) are in the state ''dependency-does-not-exist'', but they have resolvable depends, they just also have unresolvable depends. Why?
A) That's a bug in piuparts.
Q. What does state ''cannot-be-tested'' mean?

A) This means that the package couldn't be tested when it was tried the last time. Check the linked log to find out the exact reason :-) Usually it's because some depends haven't been build on piatti's architecture (amd64) yet. After seven days these packages are automatically rescheduled for testing, about this the piuparts.d.o maintainers are informed via mail, so if this happens regularily for a package they should notice.

Q. What does state ''dependency-cannot-be-tested'' mean?

A) Read the previous question and apply logic ;-)

Q. What does state ''unknown-package-or-udeb'' mean?
A) Just by looking at the Packages and Sources files it's impossible to distinguish unknown packages (because they haven't build yet are only available on certains archs) and udebs, so that's why the state is so ambiguous. Future versions of piuparts-report are supposed to alse parse the Packages files in the debian-installer directories, making it possible to properly detect udebs.
Q. So there are quite some issues in the piuparts webpages (just look at the previous three questions), shouldn't you first fix them before announcing piuparts.debian.org widely?
A) No. piuparts.debian.org is already very useful to detect problems and to file bugs. Once those bugs are filed (and fixed) it makes more sense to investigate those packages which cannot be tested at the moment.
Q. A package I'm interested in is in an untestable state. How can I find out if it would pass the piuparts test?

A) Run piuparts manually, as described in that README.

Q. Do you plan to test other architectures?
A) Yes. (Look at the file TODO in svn trunk.)
Q. How can I help?

A) by filing lots of bugs ;-) Please use piuparts usertags, to be written/copied templates for the bugreports and please get in touch with debian-qa@lists.debian.org too. Mid-term plan is to write tools to ease mass bug-reporting.

Q. I'd like to fix a bug in piuparts - where is the code?

A) svn://svn.debian.org/svn/piuparts/trunk has the piuparts source code, while svn://svn.debian.org/svn/piuparts/piatti is the code being run piatti.debian.org to produce http://piuparts.debian.org. See the piuparts wiki page for more information on how to help developing piuparts.

Q. There is something in a piuparts logfile on piuparts.debian.org that I don't understand, where can I get an answer?

A) You have at least three options: 1. add a question here, the diff is being watched and your question shall be answered. 2. Send an email to piuparts-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org 3. Ask on IRC on #debian-qa.


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