Re: [gentoo-dev] <non-maintainer-commits-welcome/> proposal

[Michal Prívozník]

On 7/4/22 16:19, Florian Schmaus wrote:
> I'd like to propose a new metadata XML element for packages:
>
>     <non-maintainer-commits-welcome/>
>
> Maintainers can signal to other developers (and of course contributors
> in general) that they are happy with others to make changes to the
> ebuilds without prior consultation of the maintainer.
>
> Of course, this is not a free ticket to always make changes to packages
> that you do not maintain without prior consultation of the maintainer. I
> would expect people to use their common sense to decide if a change may
> require maintainer attention or not. In general, it is always a good
> idea to communicate changes in every case.
>
> The absence of the flag does not automatically allow the conclusion that
> the maintainer is opposed to non-maintainer commits. It just means that
> the maintainer's stance is not known. I do not believe that we need a
> <non-maintainer-commits-disallowed/> flag, but if the need arises, we
> could always consider adding one. Although, in my experience, people
> mostly like to communicate the "non-maintainer commits welcome" policy
> with others.

I worry that this might send wrong signal. My understanding is that just
like any OSS also Gentoo struggles with attracting new contributors and
telling anybody "hey, your contribution is not welcome" does not help.

I think that rejecting a contribution (regardless of the flag) should be
based on technical merit, rather than individual maintainers personal
preferences. I do understand some packages are like your babies, you
watch them grow, fine tune everything. But in the end, if somebody finds
a bug in the ebuild/eclass/... and is even willing to provide a fix, we
should have a discussion about the proposed fix rather than refer to a
flag (or lack of thereof) when closing the MR (unmerged).

Michal