[gentoo-user] Fwd: [gentoo-dev] Better way to direct upstream bugs upstream?

[gentoo-user] Fwd: [gentoo-dev] Better way to direct upstream bugs upstream?

[Rich Freeman]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 3:54 AM, Kent Fredric <kentfredric@gmail.com> wrote:
> We've had to accept that upstream were being unreasonable, and fork
> the problem and manage it ourselves.
>
> And now we have eudev.
>
> This is a very good example of "Gentoo standing in between upstream
> and our users to protect our users from upstream".
>
> That's our job. To keep upstream accountable, and shield users from
> their mistakes.
>

That's a pretty extreme example though.  I can't think of a single
other package where this was done.

More typically Gentoo tends to follow upstream.  If a small patch will
allow broader compatibility/configurability we tend to deal with it,
but if upstream goes in a different direction we tend to support it
for the most part.

Maintainers aren't required to maintain separate patch sets in
general, beyond any fixes needed to comply with QA standards.

The thing to keep in mind that in some cases this may be a matter of
whether the package gets maintained at all.  If a dev doesn't have
time to deal with a messy upstream and we try to force them to do so,
they will probably just make it maintainer-wanted and we'll see it
treecleaned.  So, there has to be a balance.  In the case where a dev
wants to upstream an issue the concern over managing this process is a
valid one.

I'd say that tracking the bug locally is recommended, but I'd hesitate
to make it absolutely mandatory.

-- 
Rich