[gentoo-dev] Maintainership and commit policy

[Mikael Hallendal]

Hi!

I renamed the thread since it's not about xchat 1.8.2 anymore.

> I think if we choose to do this, then we had better rethink the
> incoming directory right now.  While it may be okay for a few
> outstanding user-submitted ebuilds, this scheme has the potential to
> cause a lot problems.  What we really need is an unstable cvs tree;
> then user-submitted ebuilds and non-team developer-hacked ebuilds can
> go there until they are verified by team members.

If we have maintainer of ebuilds (which I think we shall have) I don't
think that other people should commit into the CVS tree without his
aproval (neither unstable nor stable). It will be very hard for a
maintainer of many packages to keep track of what's happening if
people just commit at will.

> I think all we need is maintainer.  This is the guy who "puts his rep
> on the line."  cvs log keeps all the other information.  The person
> you really want to complain to about a bad ebuild is the maintainer
> anyway. Then he can do a cvs log to see who the culprit is and get in
> touch.

This will not be a problem if only the maintainer are allowed to
commit (or aprove commits). I think this is the best way to do it.

If you want to make a commit to an ebuild that you are not maintainer
of:

If you are a developer:
1) Send the patch to the maintainer asking if you may commit.
2) The maintainer might commit or aprove of you commiting or tell you
   why it won't go in (and perhaps what you need to fix first).

Otherwise:
1) Send the patch to the maintainer which will either commit or tell
   you to change the patch in some way.

This will make it harder for people to commit to all kinds of ebuilds
but I think that this is the way we have to do it in the future.

Of course a maintainer might give a certain person commit rights if he
trusts the other developer to do it right.

Regards,
Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke@×××××××××××.se
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