Better team maintenance of orphaned packages (Was: Bug#492503: marked as done (ITA: feh -- imlib2 based image viewer))

[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:

> Your message dated Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:47:03 +0000
> with message-id <E1KXsKV-0005ZX-7o@...>
> and subject line Bug#492503: fixed in feh 1.3.4.dfsg.1-2
> has caused the Debian Bug report #492503,
> regarding ITA: feh -- imlib2 based image viewer
> to be marked as done.

At DebConf I learned about the existence of the  nice wnpp-alert script.
It is a real shame that this script is somehow hidden below the "noise"
of many other nice scripts.  So I easily detected a set of packages I
would really like to keep in good shape because my day to day work depends
from them.

My first target was the image viewer feh.  As you see I just took over
this package but my experience in several teams has shown that it is
much better to find a team which uses a common repository for packaging
issues.  Unfortunately I can not easily find an appropriate team for
this package.  In the end I could imagine a Debian Imaging DIS
(Debian Integrated Solution - formerly known as CDD, but renamed since
DebConf).  But it would kind of overkill to start a new project for
this - I feel the need for such an effort, but I can not do it myself.
And finally it would not help for my next target gcal - I also would
fail to find a reasonable team.

So my question is: Do you think it makes sense to create a VCS on Alioth
where we could build a pool for those packages that are orphaned or just
taken over and do not find a better home.  I would feel much better if
my packaging stuff would not reside only on my local disk but in a
commonly accessible VCS and the location to this VCS is clearly mentioned
in the VCS fields of the control file.

Any opinions

        Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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[Russ Allbery-2]

Andreas Tille <tillea@...> writes:

> So my question is: Do you think it makes sense to create a VCS on Alioth
> where we could build a pool for those packages that are orphaned or just
> taken over and do not find a better home.  I would feel much better if
> my packaging stuff would not reside only on my local disk but in a
> commonly accessible VCS and the location to this VCS is clearly
> mentioned in the VCS fields of the control file.

Why not just use collab-maint for this?

--
Russ Allbery (rra@...)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 26/08/08 at 09:32 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
>
>> Your message dated Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:47:03 +0000
>> with message-id <E1KXsKV-0005ZX-7o@...>
>> and subject line Bug#492503: fixed in feh 1.3.4.dfsg.1-2
>> has caused the Debian Bug report #492503,
>> regarding ITA: feh -- imlib2 based image viewer
>> to be marked as done.
>
> At DebConf I learned about the existence of the  nice wnpp-alert script.
> It is a real shame that this script is somehow hidden below the "noise"
> of many other nice scripts.  So I easily detected a set of packages I
> would really like to keep in good shape because my day to day work depends
> from them.
>
> My first target was the image viewer feh.  As you see I just took over
> this package but my experience in several teams has shown that it is
> much better to find a team which uses a common repository for packaging
> issues.  Unfortunately I can not easily find an appropriate team for
> this package.  In the end I could imagine a Debian Imaging DIS
> (Debian Integrated Solution - formerly known as CDD, but renamed since
> DebConf).  But it would kind of overkill to start a new project for
> this - I feel the need for such an effort, but I can not do it myself.
> And finally it would not help for my next target gcal - I also would
> fail to find a reasonable team.
>
> So my question is: Do you think it makes sense to create a VCS on Alioth
> where we could build a pool for those packages that are orphaned or just
> taken over and do not find a better home.  I would feel much better if
> my packaging stuff would not reside only on my local disk but in a
> commonly accessible VCS and the location to this VCS is clearly mentioned
> in the VCS fields of the control file.

Hi Andreas,

This idea cames up on a regular basis. I think that the consensus is
that it's better to simply use the Debian archive as VCS. When you
change/fix something in an orphaned package, just upload ;)

Making the process of doing QA uploads more complex, by asking
care-takers to look at a VCS first, is IMHO not a good thing.

Of course, when a package has been adopted, and there's no obvious team
to maintain it, the best solution is probably to use collab-maint to
maintain it. You didn't know about collab-maint? Maybe we need to
communicate a bit more about this.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@...   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@...             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |


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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Russ Allbery wrote:

> Why not just use collab-maint for this?

Good question - I was just as unaware about this project as I was
about wnpp-alert script. :-(

Is it just me that I'm ignorant about important pieces of information
or is it just not well enough advertised?

Technical question about svn: Is there any chance to inject single
packagge into this tree without checking out the whole deb-maint
tree?  I have really low bandwidth at home and problems to access
SVN at work.

Kind regards and thanks for the useful hint

       Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:

> This idea cames up on a regular basis. I think that the consensus is
> that it's better to simply use the Debian archive as VCS. When you
> change/fix something in an orphaned package, just upload ;)

Well, OK, this might make some sense if you just not intend to care
more for a package than a single upload.  On the other hand there is
collab-maint/orphaned - so people seem to seek for a pragmatic solution.

> Making the process of doing QA uploads more complex, by asking
> care-takers to look at a VCS first, is IMHO not a good thing.

I trust your experience.  The precondition for keeping a package in
VCS is that debian/control contains the relevant fields - if not
nobody will ever know where to look.

> Of course, when a package has been adopted, and there's no obvious team
> to maintain it, the best solution is probably to use collab-maint to
> maintain it. You didn't know about collab-maint? Maybe we need to
> communicate a bit more about this.

Definitely!
I admit I do not very well in keeping track of all the nice tools that
are developed by fellow DDs and perhaps I do not read announcements carefully
enough (or just do not understand every consequence of an announcemant for
my daily or future work).  There is just no chance to cope with all this
stuff in my day-to-day work.  But I strongly assume that this is true for
the waste majority of DDs and we should increase the communication channels.

Kind regards

         Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de


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[Y Giridhar Appaji Nag]

Hi Andreas,

On 08/08/26 10:16 +0200, Andreas Tille said ...
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>> Why not just use collab-maint for this?
>
> Good question - I was just as unaware about this project as I was
> about wnpp-alert script. :-(
>
> Is it just me that I'm ignorant about important pieces of information
> or is it just not well enough advertised?

You probably do not follow the low volume debian-news mailing list

See http://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2006/msg00016.html

> Technical question about svn: Is there any chance to inject single
> packagge into this tree without checking out the whole deb-maint
> tree?  I have really low bandwidth at home and problems to access

Yes, add the directory you want to inject the package to (under deb-maint)
using 'svn mkdir' [1] and checkout that directory and use it.

[1] many svn commands (like svn copy, mkdir etc.) allow you to operate on the
remote repository via the repository URLs without having to checkout.

Cheers,

Giridhar

--
Y Giridhar Appaji Nag | http://appaji.net/

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 26/08/08 at 10:16 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
>> Why not just use collab-maint for this?
>
> Good question - I was just as unaware about this project as I was
> about wnpp-alert script. :-(
>
> Is it just me that I'm ignorant about important pieces of information
> or is it just not well enough advertised?

Probably not well advertised. developers-reference doesn't mention
collab-maint anywhere.

> Technical question about svn: Is there any chance to inject single
> packagge into this tree without checking out the whole deb-maint
> tree?  I have really low bandwidth at home and problems to access
> SVN at work.

See http://wiki.debian.org/Alioth/CollabMaintImport
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@...   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@...             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |


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[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Y Giridhar Appaji Nag wrote:

> You probably do not follow the low volume debian-news mailing list
>
> See http://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2006/msg00016.html

Well, yes, I do not follow this list.  I've thought d-d-a is enough.
It is a little bit hard to decide which channel is important and which
not.  At some point you have to draw a line ...

> Yes, add the directory you want to inject the package to (under deb-maint)
> using 'svn mkdir' [1] and checkout that directory and use it.
>
> [1] many svn commands (like svn copy, mkdir etc.) allow you to operate on the
> remote repository via the repository URLs without having to checkout.

Ahh, this sounds promissing because it fits my situation better than

    http://wiki.debian.org/Alioth/CollabMaintImport

because I have not yet an SVN (and just creating one just for the purpose
to dump does not sound like a clever solution).

So I added your hint to the wiki.

Kind regards

         Andreas.

--
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[Y Giridhar Appaji Nag]

Hi Andreas,

On 08/08/26 11:55 +0200, Andreas Tille said ...
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Y Giridhar Appaji Nag wrote:
>
>> You probably do not follow the low volume debian-news mailing list
>>
>> See http://lists.debian.org/debian-news/2006/msg00016.html
>
> Well, yes, I do not follow this list.  I've thought d-d-a is enough.

Turns out that in this case it is :)

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/04/msg00013.html

> It is a little bit hard to decide which channel is important and which
> not.  At some point you have to draw a line ...

These days DPN on debian-news carries useful developer information.

> because I have not yet an SVN (and just creating one just for the purpose
> to dump does not sound like a clever solution).
>
> So I added your hint to the wiki.

Ah, thank you.

Cheers,

Giridhar

--
Y Giridhar Appaji Nag | http://appaji.net/

[Holger Levsen-2]

package: developers-reference
severity: wishlist
x-debbugs-cc: debian-qa@...

On Tuesday 26 August 2008 10:28, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> Probably not well advertised. developers-reference doesn't mention
> collab-maint anywhere.

> http://wiki.debian.org/Alioth/CollabMaintImport 


regards,
        Holger

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:55:14AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Well, yes, I do not follow this list.  I've thought d-d-a is enough.

Starting from some time it should be (look for DeveloperNews on
wiki.debian.org, which is periodically posted to d-d-a), but it hasn't
always been like that.

If you have interesting news, but not worth enough for a single
announcement, please consider contributing to DeveloperNews.

Cheers.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli -*- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
I'm still an SGML person,this newfangled /\ All one has to do is hit the
XML stuff is so ... simplistic  -- Manoj \/ right keys at the right time

[tim hall-6]

Andreas Tille wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
>
>> Your message dated Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:47:03 +0000
>> with message-id <E1KXsKV-0005ZX-7o@...>
>> and subject line Bug#492503: fixed in feh 1.3.4.dfsg.1-2
>> has caused the Debian Bug report #492503,
>> regarding ITA: feh -- imlib2 based image viewer
>> to be marked as done.
>
> At DebConf I learned about the existence of the  nice wnpp-alert script.
> It is a real shame that this script is somehow hidden below the "noise"
> of many other nice scripts.  So I easily detected a set of packages I
> would really like to keep in good shape because my day to day work depends
> from them.
>
> My first target was the image viewer feh.  As you see I just took over
> this package but my experience in several teams has shown that it is
> much better to find a team which uses a common repository for packaging
> issues.  Unfortunately I can not easily find an appropriate team for
> this package.  In the end I could imagine a Debian Imaging DIS
> (Debian Integrated Solution - formerly known as CDD, but renamed since
> DebConf).  But it would kind of overkill to start a new project for
> this - I feel the need for such an effort, but I can not do it myself.
> And finally it would not help for my next target gcal - I also would
> fail to find a reasonable team.
>
> So my question is: Do you think it makes sense to create a VCS on Alioth
> where we could build a pool for those packages that are orphaned or just
> taken over and do not find a better home.  I would feel much better if
> my packaging stuff would not reside only on my local disk but in a
> commonly accessible VCS and the location to this VCS is clearly mentioned
> in the VCS fields of the control file.

Sorry, catching up after long lurkage.

This is a similar approach to the one debian-multimedia uses.
I'm not sure if you're talking about what I'd call 'fostering'. The
important consideration in this case is not to introduce any measures
which might  discourage someone from adopting the package.

cheers,

tim


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