[Fwd: [ISC-Bugs #25979] What happened to the dhcp patch in ISC-Bugs #24697 (Debian Bug #616290)?]

[Svante Signell]

Dear Debian/Hurd, GNU/Hurd and Debian-devel people. This arrived today.
Any ideas on how to proceed? Is it possible to create a Hurd-specific
fork of the latest ISC-DHCP release? DHCP is an essential package in the
Debian Installer.

Is it possible to do something at Debian level? The text below is from
the DPL Stefano Zacchiroli latest news, from November 2011:  

Relationships with others
=========================
- Thanks to the interest of Andrew Pollock, LaMont Jones, Florian Weimer
  and the Security Team, we are discussing with ISC to have Debian ---
  as a project, rather than as individuals who just happen to maintain
  ISC software in Debian --- become member of all forums relevant for
  software we distribute (BIND, NTP, DHCP). They are doing all the
  coordination work, but I've anticipated I'll be happy to pledge for
  Debian membership.

If GNU/Hurd is ever to become one of the supported architectures in
Debian, upstream portable software support is essential. The message
below counteracts these aims largely :-(

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Cathy Almond via RT <dhcp-bugs@isc.org>
Reply-to: dhcp-bugs@isc.org
To: svante.signell@telia.com
Subject: [ISC-Bugs #25979] What happened to the dhcp patch in ISC-Bugs
#24697 (Debian Bug #616290)?
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:57:03 +0000

Hi Svante,

> Dear isc-dhcp developers.
>
> I am sorry to bother you again about this issue. Maybe this bug has
> not
> been closed yet due to lack of time, most people are very busy with
> everyday life. As seen below, the patch for GNU/Hurd for isc-dhcp was
> promised to appear in the latest release. Unfortunately it was not.
>
> The patch is of very large importance for GNU/Hurd since until now the
> architecture is not supported. Additionally, the Debian maintainer is
> reluctant to include this patch due to that a non-trivial amount of
> code
> is changed, and there are two new configuration files included too.
> The
> patch submitted to Debian bug #616290 in 3 March 2011 to 4.1.1-P1-17
> and
> forwarded upstream, applies without problems also for the new release,
> 4.2.2-1, from 10 August 2011.
>
> Thanks!
I'm afraid that a mistake was made earlier when the response was given that we
planned to incorporate the submitted patch for ticket #24697. This seems to
have been due to an internal misunderstanding. Subsequently we've reviewed the
patch and discussed at length the request to have it included and have to say
that we have no plans to incorporate it in the near future.

We have some technical reservations about the proposed change in relation to
the effect they might have in other OS environments, and additionally we don't
have a test environment in which to verify the stability/supportability of the
resulting build(s) going forward.

We receive a large volume of development work requests, and while we accept
that this one is of importance to the gnu/hurd maintainers, we understand that
the number of users of this OS is relatively small and we have to take this
into account when deciding how to utilise our resources.

So with regret for the disappointment that this answer will cause, our response
has to be that this is not something that we can do now, although of course the
decision can be revisited in the future if circumstances change.

Kind regards,

Cathy Almond
ISC Support