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Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
Dear Stefano, Steve and Luk,
I like a lot Stefano's statement about collaborative maintainance:
"Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have several very
efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our default".
First of all, I would be interested to know if it is a point of divergence
between the candidates. Then, if there is interest for such a discussion, I
would like to encourage you to develop your ideas on this subject, especially
on what you can do as a DPL or DPL assistant.
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-medTsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 01:19:27PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> I like a lot Stefano's statement about collaborative maintainance:
> "Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have
> several very efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our
> default".
>
> First of all, I would be interested to know if it is a point of
> divergence between the candidates. Then, if there is interest for
> such a discussion, I would like to encourage you to develop your
> ideas on this subject, especially on what you can do as a DPL or DPL
> assistant.
Of course I'm not diverging with myself :-)
What I would do if the times will come, is to get in touch with NM
people. My proposal would be to add a "join a team" entry as one of
the *recommended* step in our join checklists.
That would be a first way of making the default I've mentioned in my
platform becoming reality. Applicants would not be required to do so,
but most of them will consider the option. The benefits would be
several:
- more sound recommendations when the time comes for DDs to support
DM/DD applications
- more (implicit, de facto) testing of the "social skills" of
applicants, as opposed as technical skills *only*
- give a reason to teams to declare and organize themselves
in structures like wiki.d.o/Teams.
In the end, that page can become an entry point where applicants
look for ways to help that matches their interests. IMO it would be
way better than pointing to the absolutely chaotic WNPP pages, they
just scare newbies away.
I hope that all this explain a bit more my position on the topic.
If not, feel free to ask more detailed questions.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 05:39:38PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > "Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have
> > several very efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our
> > default".
<snip>
> What I would do if the times will come, is to get in touch with NM
> people. My proposal would be to add a "join a team" entry as one of
> the *recommended* step in our join checklists.
Let me add a second way to implement that default; I've split it in a
different mail because it touches a different subject: handling of
sub-standard quality packages. We need ways to identify them and to,
initially gently and then more forcibly if needed, encourage
maintainers to pass over maintenance. How to do that is a different
topic, let's assume we have a way to identify such packages.
In such scenario, the first choice should be to look whether we
already have a team maintaining related packages and get actively in
touch with them to check whether there are people in the team willing
to take over maintenance. The second choice should be an attempt to
create a team for the maintenance of the package, possibly federating
together related packages. FWIW, that's how I got involved in several
of the teams I'm a member of: responding to cries for help together
with other. If all this fails, we should then put the package up for
adoption as we currently do.
Finally, I believe our most important packages (e.g., as defined by
their archive Priority or shared libraries with tons of reverse
dependencies) should be team-maintained, at least to provide backup
maintainers. In fact, the PTS already implements such a warning on a
Priority basis (implementation by Raphael, a while ago); similar
warnings can and should be added to other tools of our toolchains.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 05:39:38PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>>> "Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have
>>> several very efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our
>>> default".
> <snip>
>> What I would do if the times will come, is to get in touch with NM
>> people. My proposal would be to add a "join a team" entry as one of
>> the *recommended* step in our join checklists.
I agree that this is a good idea. Some documentation is very focused on
packaging new software, where existing teams are already having a hard
time to keep up maintaining important packages. I think both for the
existing maintainers as well as for the NM it's very probably more
rewarding to work together on existing packages.
> Let me add a second way to implement that default; I've split it in a
> different mail because it touches a different subject: handling of
> sub-standard quality packages. We need ways to identify them and to,
> initially gently and then more forcibly if needed, encourage
> maintainers to pass over maintenance. How to do that is a different
> topic, let's assume we have a way to identify such packages.
I think it's important to foremost work together with the maintainer on
this. The goal should be that the maintainer is more proactive in the
future and we would not get sub-standard quality packages for them that
easily anymore.
> In such scenario, the first choice should be to look whether we
> already have a team maintaining related packages and get actively in
> touch with them to check whether there are people in the team willing
> to take over maintenance. The second choice should be an attempt to
> create a team for the maintenance of the package, possibly federating
> together related packages. FWIW, that's how I got involved in several
> of the teams I'm a member of: responding to cries for help together
> with other. If all this fails, we should then put the package up for
> adoption as we currently do.
I don't think it's a good idea to take over packages from existing
maintainers unless that maintainer agrees with it or is not active
anymore. Proposing the maintainer to join existing teams maintaining
similar packages is a good idea though.
> Finally, I believe our most important packages (e.g., as defined by
> their archive Priority or shared libraries with tons of reverse
> dependencies) should be team-maintained, at least to provide backup
> maintainers. In fact, the PTS already implements such a warning on a
> Priority basis (implementation by Raphael, a while ago); similar
> warnings can and should be added to other tools of our toolchains.
Not a bad idea, though it's only a 'should' and should not be
interpreted as a 'must' IMHO.
Cheers
Luk
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 01:19:27PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
>Dear Stefano, Steve and Luk,
Hi again Charles!
>I like a lot Stefano's statement about collaborative maintainance:
>"Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have several very
>efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our default".
>
>First of all, I would be interested to know if it is a point of divergence
>between the candidates. Then, if there is interest for such a discussion, I
>would like to encourage you to develop your ideas on this subject, especially
>on what you can do as a DPL or DPL assistant.
I'm very much a fan of people working together on their packages, but
I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to make teams the default. If
people are happy and able to work effectively on their packages
without help, then that's up to them. Of course, for bigger packages
and groups of packages then team maintenance is clearly a good
plan. The perl team are a great example of how teams can work
together, and I'd encourage other people to follow their lead here.
I've long been an advocate of NMs (and now DMs) joining Debian and
learning / developing their skills by working with existing teams
rather than just going and packaging something new because they feel
they need to. That just leaves us with lots of packages in the archive
that people don't really care about. You can see that I've mentioned
this in my election platform in previous years. If we can encourage
new people to join teams in this way, we get a better view of the new
people too.
P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
much. Oh well... :-)
--
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@...
"It's actually quite entertaining to watch ag129 prop his foot up on
the desk so he can get a better aim." [ seen in ucam.chat ]
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All candidates: Membership procedures
la, 2009-03-21 kello 01:42 +0000, Steve McIntyre kirjoitti:
> P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
> much. Oh well... :-)
Dear Zack McIntyre, Steve Claes, and Luk Zacchiroli,
What's your opinion on membership procedures?
Last year there were some rough proposals for how to change the
membership procedures. It started with Joerg's proposal, but other
people suggested their own kinds of changes, including me. I feel that
my approach and Joerg's are pretty much diametrically opposed. What's
your opinion? Do you feel the current NM process works well and almost
always selects for the kind of people that are really great for Debian?
Would some other kind of process work better? What kind of membership
process would you like to see in Debian in, say, a year from now? Please
feel free to dream, there's no point in being too constricted by reality
and practical considerations.
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
Hi,
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:42:11AM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 01:19:27PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> >Dear Stefano, Steve and Luk,
>
> Hi again Charles!
>
> >I like a lot Stefano's statement about collaborative maintainance:
> >"Collaborative maintenance should not be mandatory (we do have several very
> >efficient one-man-band developers), but should be our default".
> >
> >First of all, I would be interested to know if it is a point of divergence
> >between the candidates. Then, if there is interest for such a discussion, I
> >would like to encourage you to develop your ideas on this subject, especially
> >on what you can do as a DPL or DPL assistant.
>
> I'm very much a fan of people working together on their packages, but
> I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to make teams the default. If
I think for the vast majority of packages in our archive this would
simply be overkill. But I'm interested what you think about the
following:
In Debian we have some packages that are either by default on every
system or are commonly expected to be found on Debian systems. Such
tools could be called the core of our system, because they are most
commonly used on a Debian system. Such packages include coreutils, gzip,
grep, hostname, initscripts, obviously all the tools that make up a
Debian system like dpkg, at, cron and some more. Short said: More or
less all packages with a priority of Standard or higher, although one
would need to think about this scope wrt to the following proposal.
Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well,
bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have
that cool text on the PTS pages: "The package is of priority standard
or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers." which brought
me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: "HaHaHa,
we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what
should actually be the default (for this type of packages).
Thats why I thought it would eventually be a good idea to form a core
team, meaning a team of a bunch of people (10-20?), with wide-spread
knowledge and known to have enough free time (e.g. people who have > 50
packages and aren't able to keep up with the bug reports in their own
packages wouldn't qualify) that gets the job to (co-)maintain all these
packages that are very important to us. It doesn't mean that the
existing maintainers are taken away the packages, because they could
still stay the maintainers, but obviously some of these packages are not
easily maintainable by one person.
What do you think about such a proposal?
Best Regards,
Patrick
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Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:34:57AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> la, 2009-03-21 kello 01:42 +0000, Steve McIntyre kirjoitti:
> > P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
> > much. Oh well... :-)
>
> Dear Zack McIntyre, Steve Claes, and Luk Zacchiroli,
>
> What's your opinion on membership procedures?
>
> Last year there were some rough proposals for how to change the
> membership procedures. It started with Joerg's proposal, but other
> people suggested their own kinds of changes, including me. I feel that
> my approach and Joerg's are pretty much diametrically opposed. What's
> your opinion? Do you feel the current NM process works well and almost
> always selects for the kind of people that are really great for Debian?
> Would some other kind of process work better? What kind of membership
> process would you like to see in Debian in, say, a year from now? Please
> feel free to dream, there's no point in being too constricted by reality
> and practical considerations.
I'd also be interested in hearing the response to this, as it would be one of
the key points that would decide where my vote went
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well,
> bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have
> that cool text on the PTS pages: "The package is of priority standard
> or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers." which brought
> me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: "HaHaHa,
> we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what
> should actually be the default (for this type of packages).
> Thats why I thought it would eventually be a good idea to form a core
> team, meaning a team of a bunch of people (10-20?), with wide-spread
> knowledge and known to have enough free time (e.g. people who have > 50
> packages and aren't able to keep up with the bug reports in their own
> packages wouldn't qualify) that gets the job to (co-)maintain all these
> packages that are very important to us. It doesn't mean that the
> existing maintainers are taken away the packages, because they could
> still stay the maintainers, but obviously some of these packages are not
> easily maintainable by one person.
> What do you think about such a proposal?
Why are you asking the DPL candidates what they think of this proposal,
instead of proposing it to the developers?
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/slangasek@... vorlon@...
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:11:58PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > What do you think about such a proposal?
>
> Why are you asking the DPL candidates what they think of this proposal,
> instead of proposing it to the developers?
Well, because it is in line with the questions which they have been
asked and its both a good chance to see weither they stand on a similar point
as I do and to see weither anyone is interested in the idea
at all. Surely I intend to propose it to the larger body once its more then
a rough idea.
Regards,
Patrick
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2009, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:11:58PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > > What do you think about such a proposal?
> >
> > Why are you asking the DPL candidates what they think of this proposal,
> > instead of proposing it to the developers?
>
> Well, because it is in line with the questions which they have been
> asked and its both a good chance to see weither they stand on a similar point
> as I do and to see weither anyone is interested in the idea
> at all. Surely I intend to propose it to the larger body once its more then
> a rough idea.
I expressly refrained to answer your mail because it targetted the DPL
candidate but IMO it's one those "false good ideas until you make it a
reality". I'm all for a team of many people improving the base packages,
so find those people and start triaging and writing patches _together_
with the actual maintainers.
But don't explain your plan by saying "maintainers of core packages suck"
(even if they sometimes do) but rather with "we want our core packages to
be in the best possible shape and we will help the maintainers to achieve
this goal".
Cheers,
PS: You didn't reply to -project about the metric of bugs (25 normal bugs
== 1 RC bug). I hoped we could turn this discussion on something positive
to improve the fate of core packages.
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Contribuez à Debian et gagnez un cahier de l'admin Debian Lenny :
http://www.ouaza.com/wp/2009/03/02/contribuer-a-debian-gagner-un-livre/--
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 10:25:11AM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Mar 2009, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:11:58PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > > > What do you think about such a proposal?
> > >
> > > Why are you asking the DPL candidates what they think of this proposal,
> > > instead of proposing it to the developers?
> >
> > Well, because it is in line with the questions which they have been
> > asked and its both a good chance to see weither they stand on a similar point
> > as I do and to see weither anyone is interested in the idea
> > at all. Surely I intend to propose it to the larger body once its more then
> > a rough idea.
>
> I expressly refrained to answer your mail because it targetted the DPL
> candidate but IMO it's one those "false good ideas until you make it a
> reality". I'm all for a team of many people improving the base packages,
> so find those people and start triaging and writing patches _together_
> with the actual maintainers.
Well, some time back I wrote some patches for coreutils. Unfortunately
they are not yet integrated, but thats not the fault of the maintainer.
However I think it could help if the project decides that this is a good idea
and (if needed) can overrrule single maintainers. Because you surely know
that there are people who simply don't accept the fact, that they are
overloaded with the work they beared on themselves.
> But don't explain your plan by saying "maintainers of core packages suck"
> (even if they sometimes do) but rather with "we want our core packages to
> be in the best possible shape and we will help the maintainers to achieve
> this goal".
Thats not what I did. Telling that our core tools have a large number of
bugs that are partially ignored, however, is something one could say, while
not saying that the maintainers of the packages suck.
> PS: You didn't reply to -project about the metric of bugs (25 normal bugs
> == 1 RC bug). I hoped we could turn this discussion on something positive
> to improve the fate of core packages.
Which one? One that were started shortly before the Lenny release?
Atleast I replied in a similar thread and said that it would be a good idea.
Regards,
Patrick
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sun, 22 Mar 2009, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > I expressly refrained to answer your mail because it targetted the DPL
> > candidate but IMO it's one those "false good ideas until you make it a
> > reality". I'm all for a team of many people improving the base packages,
> > so find those people and start triaging and writing patches _together_
> > with the actual maintainers.
>
> Well, some time back I wrote some patches for coreutils. Unfortunately
> they are not yet integrated, but thats not the fault of the maintainer.
I don't know what leads you to say this but yes, real bugs that are not
Debian-specific are best fixed upstream or in coordination with upstream.
> However I think it could help if the project decides that this is a good idea
> and (if needed) can overrrule single maintainers. Because you surely know
> that there are people who simply don't accept the fact, that they are
> overloaded with the work they beared on themselves.
We can certainly do something if we have good maintainers that are willing
to do the job if the actual maintainer is actively blocking work, but in
most of the cases I have not seen active opposition.
> > But don't explain your plan by saying "maintainers of core packages suck"
> > (even if they sometimes do) but rather with "we want our core packages to
> > be in the best possible shape and we will help the maintainers to achieve
> > this goal".
>
> Thats not what I did. Telling that our core tools have a large number of
> bugs that are partially ignored, however, is something one could say, while
> not saying that the maintainers of the packages suck.
I did not say that you did it, but I warned you to not fall in the trap.
That's all.
> Which one? One that were started shortly before the Lenny release?
> Atleast I replied in a similar thread and said that it would be a good idea.
I replied to your -private mail and moved it to -project.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2009/03/msg00081.htmlIt's precisely because such a metric is useless that I replied. :)
I tried to point you in other ways to responsabilize maintainers
that have trouble recognizing that they are overloaded.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
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Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> la, 2009-03-21 kello 01:42 +0000, Steve McIntyre kirjoitti:
>> P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
>> much. Oh well... :-)
>
> Dear Zack McIntyre, Steve Claes, and Luk Zacchiroli,
>
> What's your opinion on membership procedures?
>
> Last year there were some rough proposals for how to change the
> membership procedures. It started with Joerg's proposal, but other
> people suggested their own kinds of changes, including me. I feel that
> my approach and Joerg's are pretty much diametrically opposed. What's
> your opinion? Do you feel the current NM process works well and almost
> always selects for the kind of people that are really great for Debian?
> Would some other kind of process work better? What kind of membership
> process would you like to see in Debian in, say, a year from now? Please
> feel free to dream, there's no point in being too constricted by reality
> and practical considerations.
I think we first have to think about what a member, if we need different
types of access/members and what they would be before thinking about the
process(es) to become a member. I do think for instance that
contributers who spend a lot of effort in Debian (like for instance some
translators) should be able to become a member and so be able to vote.
Cheers
Luk
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Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
su, 2009-03-22 kello 17:01 +0100, Luk Claes kirjoitti:
> I think we first have to think about what a member, if we need different
> types of access/members and what they would be before thinking about the
> process(es) to become a member. I do think for instance that
> contributers who spend a lot of effort in Debian (like for instance some
> translators) should be able to become a member and so be able to vote.
Translators can already become members of the project, as far as I know.
For the rest of your answer, I must admit I remain in the unclear about
what you think, Luk: the questions you raise are certainly questions
that should be raised in this discussion, but do you have answers or
opinions on them, even if preliminary? I'm not looking anything set in
stone, but I'd like to know what the candidates think on these issues.
Do you think the current process if mostly fine, or you think it needs
to be scrapped and re-created from scratch? Or something else?
I'd also be fine with an answer just saying that it's not an issue the
candidate has spent much time thinking about, and so does not have an
opinion on it at the current time.
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Re: All candidates: Membership procedures
Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> su, 2009-03-22 kello 17:01 +0100, Luk Claes kirjoitti:
>> I think we first have to think about what a member, if we need different
>> types of access/members and what they would be before thinking about the
>> process(es) to become a member. I do think for instance that
>> contributers who spend a lot of effort in Debian (like for instance some
>> translators) should be able to become a member and so be able to vote.
>
> Translators can already become members of the project, as far as I know.
It's already possible, though not it's not very known nor easy for a
translator to become a DD AFAIK.
> For the rest of your answer, I must admit I remain in the unclear about
> what you think, Luk: the questions you raise are certainly questions
> that should be raised in this discussion, but do you have answers or
> opinions on them, even if preliminary? I'm not looking anything set in
> stone, but I'd like to know what the candidates think on these issues.
> Do you think the current process if mostly fine, or you think it needs
> to be scrapped and re-created from scratch? Or something else?
*The* current process is not very obvious to me as there is the DM
process for limited upload rights and the NM process to become a DD
(access to machines, upload rights, voting rights, some extra benefits
like the email address).
I think it's wrong to make totally separate processes with gross hacks
in core tools of our infrastructure to support multiple types of membership.
So I do think that the questions I posed are to be answered first before
rethinking details in the processes: there first needs to be a global
picture. I do think that the current DD and DM statuses are not the only
types of membership there should be or not necessarily in its current form.
Cheers
Luk
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 11:28:56AM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > > Well, because it is in line with the questions which they have been
> > > asked and its both a good chance to see weither they stand on a similar point
> > > as I do and to see weither anyone is interested in the idea
> > > at all. Surely I intend to propose it to the larger body once its more then
> > > a rough idea.
> > I expressly refrained to answer your mail because it targetted the DPL
> > candidate but IMO it's one those "false good ideas until you make it a
> > reality". I'm all for a team of many people improving the base packages,
> > so find those people and start triaging and writing patches _together_
> > with the actual maintainers.
> Well, some time back I wrote some patches for coreutils. Unfortunately
> they are not yet integrated, but thats not the fault of the maintainer.
> However I think it could help if the project decides that this is a good idea
> and (if needed) can overrrule single maintainers.
There are existing procedures for overruling individual maintainers - i.e.,
appealing to the Technical Committee. If you think an override is needed,
you might try the existing process before deciding that we need an entirely
new one?
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/slangasek@... vorlon@...
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 08:42:59PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Well, some time back I wrote some patches for coreutils. Unfortunately
> > they are not yet integrated, but thats not the fault of the maintainer.
> > However I think it could help if the project decides that this is a good idea
> > and (if needed) can overrrule single maintainers.
>
> There are existing procedures for overruling individual maintainers - i.e.,
> appealing to the Technical Committee. If you think an override is needed,
> you might try the existing process before deciding that we need an entirely
> new one?
Good point. Nothing to add.
Best Regards,
Patrick
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 01:00:39PM +0100, Luk Claes wrote:
> >> people. My proposal would be to add a "join a team" entry as one of
> >> the *recommended* step in our join checklists.
>
> I agree that this is a good idea.
Cool.
> > Let me add a second way to implement that default; I've split it
> > in a different mail because it touches a different subject:
> > handling of sub-standard quality packages. We need ways to
> > identify them and to, initially gently and then more forcibly if
> > needed, encourage maintainers to pass over maintenance. How to do
> > that is a different topic, let's assume we have a way to identify
> > such packages.
>
> I think it's important to foremost work together with the maintainer
> on this. The goal should be that the maintainer is more proactive in
> the future and we would not get sub-standard quality packages for
> them that easily anymore.
Yes, but at this abstraction level it is so vague that we cannot
really learn anything from it. How do you plan to ensure that that
will be the case? Neglected packages are in most case a signal of the
maintainer attention having moved elsewhere.
The most likely outcome is to pass over maintenance to somebody else,
which usually happens when the maintainer is still responsive enough
to publicly look for help by creating a maintenance team. Then, IME,
what will inevitably happen is that the new maintenance team will
completely take over the package. When this happens we have no problem
to fix ...
> I don't think it's a good idea to take over packages from existing
> maintainers unless that maintainer agrees with it or is not active
> anymore. Proposing the maintainer to join existing teams maintaining
> similar packages is a good idea though.
... the problem we have to fix is when the maintainer is not reactive
enough to look for help.
There, the QA team stepping in and suggesting to ask for help
(publicly, so that we have it traced) and suggesting the formation of
a maintenance team can be an interesting evolution.
> > Finally, I believe our most important packages (e.g., as defined by
> > their archive Priority or shared libraries with tons of reverse
> > dependencies) should be team-maintained, at least to provide backup
> > maintainers. In fact, the PTS already implements such a warning on a
> > Priority basis (implementation by Raphael, a while ago); similar
> > warnings can and should be added to other tools of our toolchains.
>
> Not a bad idea, though it's only a 'should' and should not be
> interpreted as a 'must' IMHO.
Agreed.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:42:11AM +0000, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> I'm very much a fan of people working together on their packages, but
> I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to make teams the default. If
<snip>
> P.S. Damn, just read Zack's answer and we don't seem to differ very
> much. Oh well... :-)
... well, expect that you don't consider team maintenance to be the
reasonable default while I do :-)
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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