Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: packages going into the tree with non-gentoo maintainers

["Kevin F. Quinn" <kevquinn@gentoo.org>]

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On Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:57:10 +0200
Stefan Schweizer <genstef@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> > I don't think it's a good idea for devs to be putting stuff into the
> > tree without taking responsibility for it.  
> sure I can put myself in there but it will help no one because I
> cannot test the thing.

Then you should not have committed it - as a dev it is your
responsibility to test any ebuilds your commit.  There's nothing
stopping you doing the normal checks on the ebuild, even if you can't
read Hebrew.  For example you should verify whether the '-j1' is really
necessary on emake.

> Furthermore I am actually part of
> maintainer-needed and commit fixes there. I am also on the
> maintainer-needed email alias.

For a start, "maintainer-needed" is just a mail alias, it is not a
herd and never can be, by definition. See
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/metastructure/herds/herds.xml.

The point of a herd is to provide a contact for maintenance of the
member packages - and maintainer-needed by definition does not do
maintenance.

> Also maintainer-needed makes obvious to everyone that they do not
> have to ask me to fix sth. or take over the package -> less
> communication overhead.

You can put notes into metadata.xml - see other instances for
examples; the easiest way is to have two maintainer entries, and in
the description field describe the maintenance arrangement.  Putting
"maintainer-needed" as the herd just means the package is essentially
unmaintained, and is a candidate for removal. We should not be putting
stuff into the official tree if no dev has taken responsibility for it.

> > I would expect that either 
> > the herd is set appropriately (which means either the committer be a
> > member of the herd, or the herd explicitly agree to be proxy), 
> which is the case here.

See above - maintainer-needed does not satisfy the requirements of the
herd entry.

> > or the 
> > committer be listed as a maintainer email address along with
> > whoever is being proxied.  
> the committer in this case has no interest in maintaining the thing.

Even more reason the package should acquire a dev to maintain it, or be
removed from the tree.

> And for proxying it does not matter who is proxying.

Proxying is more than just "doing whatever the non-dev says".  By
committing to the tree, you take full responsibility for those
commits.

> > Further I believe bugs against such packages should be 
> > assigned to the @gentoo.org address (proxy maintainer if there is
> > one, herd otherwise), and CC'ed to the proxied maintainer address.
> 
> this does not allow the actual maintainer to close the bug and causes
> a lot of bugspam for a person who does not care about it and should
> be only contacted in the end to commit fixes/patches/bumps.

Whoever does the commit takes formal responsibility for those commits.
Therefore they should take note of bug activity relating to those
commits.  If they don't care about that then they should not be acting
as proxy in that case.


Surely this is what the Sunrise overlay was for; user-supplied ebuilds
that don't have a a Gentoo dev to take responsibility for maintenance.

-- 
Kevin F. Quinn

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