Subject: Re: [bug#61583] [PATCH] gnu: git: Update to 2.39.2 [fixes CVE-2023-22490 & CVE-2023-23946].

From: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2023 13:45:58 -0500

On Sat, Mar 04, 2023 at 07:52:04PM +0100, Simon Tournier wrote:
> I get 546 dependent packages for git + git-minimal which need to be
> re-built.  And some are really expensive -- that what I meant by "a
> lot of rebuilds". :-)
> 
> Well, I do not know if there is an issue with QA or it is just really
> expensive but the process is still pending, if I read correctly
> <https://qa.guix.gnu.org/issue/61583>.

At the Guix Days, it was said that there is a limit to how many builds
the QA server will perform for a change. I don't recall the number, but
maybe 300 builds per change? So, if a change causes too many rebuilds,
the QA server will not perform the builds.

Aside: Chris, I'd be happy to add a FAQ page to the QA server that
answers this type of question. Let me know if I've missed that one
already exists.

For the Berlin server, I don't think that 546 builds is too many, at
least for Intel systems.

> > Concretely, why can't we push this to master immediately?
> 
> Somehow the guarantee that none of these 546 would not be broken by
> the update. ;-)

It's certainly possible that something breaks. But we can do a simple
test by trying to update our profiles and Guix System installations, and
checking that our tools still work. I think it's okay to cause a little
breakage in order to deploy important security updates.