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Hi, |
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|
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> If you have something you'd wish for us to chat about, maybe even |
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> vote on, let us know ! Simply reply to this e-mail for the whole |
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> Gentoo dev list to see. |
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If it's not too late for this month's meeting, I'd like to discuss the |
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possibility of including a new "post" in our developer base - the |
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package maintainer. |
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a) The requirements to become a package maintainer for Gentoo may be |
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lesser than that of the full-fledged developer. This serves a couple |
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of purposes: |
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- Users might become more motivated to becoming a maintainer for |
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Gentoo, since it would require less time and effort from their end |
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- Might reduce the number of orphaned packages we have in the tree |
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|
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b) Some existing developers might want to switch to this post, if they |
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feel that package maintenance is all they really want to do with |
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Gentoo. This has the advantage of requiring lesser time from their |
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side, while not feeling the pressure of being "responsible". We |
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already have arch-testers, so this will fit in nicely with our current |
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development model. |
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|
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c) The actual developer post may be taken up by existing developers |
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who make wide-ranging or significant changes to Gentoo, as a whole. |
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Examples include: package manager development, eclasses, |
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documentation; basically anything that would require a GLEP or commit |
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access to the whole tree - you get the idea. |
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|
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Some of you may argue that we already have proxy-maintainers. That's a |
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great idea, all I'm asking for is for us to formalize the position. |
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Giving a proxy-maintainer an official acknowledgement will definitely |
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attract more users to contribute. Meanwhile, developers can do |
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innovative things that they really like without having to maintain |
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packages just because of a formality. Giving package maintainers |
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commit access to parts of the tree might turn out to be tricky though, |
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this needs discussion with infra. |
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I'd really like for us to think through this proposal - I strongly |
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believe that this will improve the quality of Gentoo development as a |
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whole, and reduce the number of open bugs and their turnaround times. |
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Cheers, |
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Anant |
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|
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P.S. As some of you may have already guessed, this proposal is based |
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on Debian's approval of a similar position in their developer |
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hierarchy last year: http://www.us.debian.org/vote/2007/vote_003 |
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|
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P.P.S. Maybe this is more suited for -project, but everyone knows that |
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nobody reads that list :-p |
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-- |
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gentoo-dev@l.g.o mailing list |
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