7.2.2. Bug squashing parties

From time to time the QA group organizes bug squashing parties to get rid of as many problems as possible. They are announced on debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org and the announcement explains which area will be the focus of the party: usually they focus on release critical bugs but it may happen that they decide to help finish a major upgrade (like a new perl version that requires recompilation of all the binary modules).

The rules for non-maintainer uploads differ during the parties because the announcement of the party is considered prior notice for NMU. If you have packages that may be affected by the party (because they have release critical bugs for example), you should send an update to each of the corresponding bug to explain their current status and what you expect from the party. If you don’t want an NMU, or if you’re only interested in a patch, or if you will deal with the bug yourself, please explain that in the BTS.

People participating in the party have special rules for NMU; they can NMU without prior notice if they upload their NMU to DELAYED/3-day at least. All other NMU rules apply as usual; they should send the patch of the NMU to the BTS (to one of the open bugs fixed by the NMU, or to a new bug, tagged fixed). They should also respect any particular wishes of the maintainer.

If you don’t feel confident about doing an NMU, just send a patch to the BTS. It’s far better than a broken NMU.