Comment 7 for bug 935756

I would just like to note that this is not the first time that an untested backport of a Twisted patch was deployed on Ubuntu or Debian and caused problems.

On the Twisted project, we have an elaborate continuous integration system (see <http://buildbot.twistedmatrix.com/>) that verifies that our software is correct, as well as pre-release testing with our user community, many of whom have similar testing rigs for integrating Twisted with their application. We really need that infrastructure because Twisted's whole job is managing the numerous subtle interactions with underlying operating system interfaces, including signals and threads, pipes, sockets, etc etc.

It seems like when a distribution patches something, the patches are widely distributed without any similar testing process, which means that we get hard-to-debug issues like this one, that are the result of dependent changes not being present. The fact that this one got caught before release is great, but others have slipped through into releases (if I recall correctly, even LTS releases) in the past.

In the future, it would be great if Ubuntu could work with us to do point-releases that get vetted the same way, rather than shipping untested patches.