In Ubuntu’s development process new package versions don’t immediately get released, but they enter the -proposed pocket first, where they are built and tested. In addition to testing the package itself other packages are also tested together with the updated package, to make sure the update doesn’t break the other packages either.
The packages in the -proposed pocket are listed on the update excuses page with their testing status. When a package is successfully built and all triggered tests passed the package can migrate to the release pocket, but when the builds or tests fail, the package is blocked from migration to preserve the quality of the release.
Sometimes packages are stuck in -proposed for a longer period because the build or test failures can’t be solved quickly. In the past several people may have triaged the same problem without being able to easily share their observations, but from now on if you figured out something about what broke, please open a bug against the stuck package with your findings and mark the package with the update-excuse tag. The bug will be linked to from the update excuses page so the next person picking up the problem can continue from there. You can even leave a patch in the bug so a developer with upload rights can find it easily and upload it right away.
The update-excuse tag applies to the current development series only, but it does not come alone. To leave notes for a specific release’s -proposed pocket, use the update-excuse-$SERIES tag, for example update-excuse-bionic to have the bug linked from 18.04’s (Bionic Beaver’s ) update excuses page.
Fixing failures in -proposed is big part of the integration work done by Ubuntu Developers and help is always very welcome. If you see your favorite package being stuck on update excuses, please take a look at why and maybe open an update-excuse bug. You may be the one who helped the package making it to the next Ubuntu release!
(The new tags were added by Tiago Stürmer Daitx and me during the last Canonical engineering sprint’s coding day. Fun! 🙂 )