Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: "Robin H. Johnson" <robbat2@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Soliciting input for a non-maintainer update (NMU) GLEP
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:51:17
Message-Id: robbat2-20130621T182855-619828737Z@orbis-terrarum.net
1 Hi all,
2
3 From what I've read on the list recently, there's a lot of demand for
4 non-maintainer updates to ebuilds. Esp. with the upcoming Git migration,
5 I predict there will be a much larger influx of changes from users.
6
7 Some developers (eg myself) have a general policy [2] that we send out
8 to the list occasionally welcome everybody to touch our packages (so
9 long as they own their breakages). A few packages discouraged touching
10 due to fragility, but mostly we were a very open society.
11
12 Back in the days of "The Old Ones", this was a general practice for all
13 developers, but somewhere along the line, some developers seem to have
14 grown territorial of their ebuilds.
15
16 Debian has their own NMU process:
17 http://wiki.debian.org/NonMaintainerUpload
18 http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.html#nmu
19 With a long whitelist of devs/teams that welcome it:
20 http://wiki.debian.org/LowThresholdNmu
21
22 So I'd like to hear input on how developers & users (esp
23 proxy-maintainers) on maybe writing a NMU GLEP.
24
25 I'm open to all input, but here's some initial questions I'd like to
26 hear your answers to:
27 - How should developers, herds & teams communicate how welcome they are
28 to NMU changes on their packages?
29 - to humans?
30 - to automated scripts?
31 - where? metadata.xml?
32 - What sorts of changes (see Debian NMU):
33 - Are welcome?
34 - Are prohibited?
35 - Are somewhere between the two?
36 - Does this need to be controlled per-package?
37 - What about upstream-rejected changes?
38 - How do we encourage responsible ownership of changes that cause
39 breakage? [1]
40
41 1. I've been leading infra for a few years now, and I've got a few
42 ground rules, maybe we can run with parts of those:
43 - If you break something, own up ASAP; there will be no punishment, just
44 help in getting it fixed.
45 - You're responsible for many people's systems/access/privacy, don't
46 abuse it.
47 (Ciaranm: since you were talking about lack of honesty of corporate
48 cultures in response to my previous mail, here's your chance again).
49
50 2. This isn't entirely selfless, I want to have to tell people less that
51 they can go and touch most of my packages WITHOUT asking me or waiting
52 for me to reply to a bug.
53
54 --
55 Robin Hugh Johnson
56 Gentoo Linux: Developer, Trustee & Infrastructure Lead
57 E-Mail : robbat2@g.o
58 GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85

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