[Mageia-discuss] MANDATORY READ : 7 days before misc unleashes CERBERUS !

Thomas Spuhler thomas at btspuhler.com
Sun Sep 18 20:58:15 CEST 2011


On Saturday, September 17, 2011 12:56:10 am Juergen Harms wrote:
> On 09/16/2011 10:43 PM, Maarten Vanraes wrote:
> > This is exactly why Stormi's idea is a great one, welcome i should say:
> > look around for a mentor, ask andre999 about it (he's the mentoring
> > coordinator)...
> 
> I will. And sorry, my message went away from my drafts folder
> accidentally before it was spelled out risks to sound crude. Some more
> details on my thoughts (and picking up what has been said about creating
> groups):
> 
> (1) Stormi's idea is particularly adapted to a community distro - and I
> agree, if community members (nearly) at large contribute to package
> maintenance, they may need some backing up. Doing this by organising
> groups on the basis of implementation languages may be very helpful
> while looking for maintainers. Once the work goes on, there may be more
> specific needs. Take my example: with backuppc I might come on questions
> to people who know the wheels in apache, or with geda I might need
> putting straight with GUI questions. Might be a good idea to put some
> thought into organising that - maybe just a slight twist to the mageia
> dev mailing list (and maybe after an initial period of gathering
> experience).
> 
> (2) I have had a close look at the package list: throwing out "nobody"
> packages in an un-organised way, just following considerations whether
> incidentlally a package has been picked up or not, risks crippling
> Mageia into a distro that does not stand up to other distros (just look
> at editors - a distro without ed, sed, emax, xemacs ?) Before the
> cerberos comes with a big guillotine, there should at least be a first
> phase when a list of "absolutely required packages" has been defined,
> for which maintainers need to be actively defined (using thumb screws,
> chantage - what is the english word? - if need be) - and this might work
> better once the present search for volonteers has established a broader
> base of known candidates. That requires some time - a 1-week cerberos
> would not allow for that.
> 
> (3) Again with the example of backuppc and geda in mind: both have
> strong upstream activities, active and competent mailing lists. I have
> no idea, how traditionally maintainership is organised in front of such
> a background. I will certainly need to sign up for these lists (again -
> I quit after an initial phase - too much traffic). Do down-stream
> distros have a particular standing with upstream parents?
> 
> (4) Apropos "I have no idea": it might be helpful if a few lines of text
> would exist that describe the duties and the normal way of "functioning"
> of a maintainer.

I grabbed a few more, the ones I need for kolab or for personal work/leisure.
If nobody else volunteers, I will take all php and php-pear packages, but it 
will be a stretch of my time.

-- 
Thomas


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