[gentoo-dev] Soliciting input for a non-maintainer update (NMU) GLEP

["Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@gentoo.org>]

Hi all,

From what I've read on the list recently, there's a lot of demand for
non-maintainer updates to ebuilds. Esp. with the upcoming Git migration,
I predict there will be a much larger influx of changes from users.

Some developers (eg myself) have a general policy [2] that we send out
to the list occasionally welcome everybody to touch our packages (so
long as they own their breakages). A few packages discouraged touching
due to fragility, but mostly we were a very open society.

Back in the days of "The Old Ones", this was a general practice for all
developers, but somewhere along the line, some developers seem to have
grown territorial of their ebuilds.

Debian has their own NMU process:
http://wiki.debian.org/NonMaintainerUpload
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.html#nmu
With a long whitelist of devs/teams that welcome it:
http://wiki.debian.org/LowThresholdNmu

So I'd like to hear input on how developers & users (esp
proxy-maintainers) on maybe writing a NMU GLEP.

I'm open to all input, but here's some initial questions I'd like to
hear your answers to:
- How should developers, herds & teams communicate how welcome they are
  to NMU changes on their packages?
  - to humans?
  - to automated scripts?
  - where? metadata.xml?
- What sorts of changes (see Debian NMU):
  - Are welcome?
  - Are prohibited?
  - Are somewhere between the two?
  - Does this need to be controlled per-package?
  - What about upstream-rejected changes?
- How do we encourage responsible ownership of changes that cause
  breakage? [1]

1. I've been leading infra for a few years now, and I've got a few
ground rules, maybe we can run with parts of those:
- If you break something, own up ASAP; there will be no punishment, just
  help in getting it fixed.
- You're responsible for many people's systems/access/privacy, don't
  abuse it.
(Ciaranm: since you were talking about lack of honesty of corporate
cultures in response to my previous mail, here's your chance again).

2. This isn't entirely selfless, I want to have to tell people less that
they can go and touch most of my packages WITHOUT asking me or waiting
for me to reply to a bug.

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85