Re: [H-source-users] [bug #63209] devuan GNU/Linux not on list of supported distributions

[John Sullivan]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 02:35:55PM -0400, bill-auger wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 23:45:23 -0400 John wrote:
> > Previously, Debian submissions were reliable -- the bright line was simple: 
> > no
> > other repos besides main enabled. If only main was enabled, Debian 
> > submissions
> > could be trusted.
> 
> that does not meet my definition of "reliable" - that sort of
> reliability depends on the "honor system" and the user's
> knowledge of the system configuration, both of which are
> unreliable - debian just made the latter less reliable, by
> enabling the non-free repos automatically
> 

Yes I agree the situation has changed now with the Debian vote. 

But for the general point, fortunately, there is little incentive to
intentionally enter bad info here, so the issue is more one of potential
confusion / lack of knowledge, and I think the best way is as you say, to
develop the client and it should automatically check the system repo config; in
the meantime, clear instructions including a required question or something to
prompt the user to check sources.list etc. 

I think the (now outdated) instructions on the front page about Debian main
were already pretty good, telling people the command to run to easily check
what repos were enabled.

How many reports deemed "bad" coming from Debian or other systems have there 
been?

As with any other system relying on crowd effort, we should be careful about
the balance between trying to enforce airtight rules, and raising the bar so
high such that we don't get enough contributions -- including the kinds of
contributions that are catching other people's errors. My impression is not
that h-node is struggling with a high volume of bad contributions, but that
impression is not based on actual data, so I am genuinely curious what we know
about the current state of things.

-john