Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items for upcoming council meeting (2022-05-08)

[Arthur Zamarin]

On 03/05/2022 07.39, Sam James wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Please reply with any topics you wish to be discussed during the next council meeting (this coming Sunday, 2022-05-08).
>

Hi

After some discussions on #gentoo-qa IRC with ulm, sam and floppym, we
were discussing off by default auto signoff for pkgdev.


Background:

pkgdev [1] is a tool that was supposed to replace repoman by previous
discussions. Currently, I'm the main maintainer of it, and I'm working
on improving it, implementing feature request, etc.
By default, when you use `pkgdev commit`, it automatically adds the arg
`--signoff` to the `git commit` command, so the S-o-b is added, to
comply with GLEP 76 [2].


Change Explanation:

ulm had suggested to turn off *by default* the passing of `--signoff`.
The user need to make a conscious decision that he agrees to sign the
commits.
If I look at the GLEP text, the line "The purpose of the certificate is
to declare that the contribution can be modified and redistributed in
accordance with the project's license" makes me to agree with this idea,
on the legal front.

Of course I don't want to break the flow of all pkgdev user's. Around 2
weeks ago, I have added support for pkgdev configuration support (still
not released), so any user can set "his" defaults. In this case, the
user will need to set it in config file at ~/.config/pkgdev/pkgdev.conf

  [gentoo]
  commit.signoff = true

And all future calls to `pkgdev commit` will auto add the signoff (as
current flow), otherwise the user can selectively pass the arg to
command, as `pkgdev commit --signoff`.


Council Intervention:

This change will force all users to change their flow, or set the
configuration part - meaning it is a semi-breaking change. I have
received some private messages on IRC of requests to not do this change
(they requested to remain anonymous). On the other hand, I agree with
ulm on the necessity of this change to be more "legal".
I see pkgdev as shared Gentoo project and tool, so I don't want to make
disruptive decision for all of us. I want unity.

Therefore I'm asking for a council vote on "change the default signoff
state when committing on an unconfigured system to be turned off". Of
course you can use better wording for this :)

I will take on myself implementing it, and on release of next pkgdev
version, I will send an announcement message of this breaking change, so
most users will be notified, and can easily select wanted flow.


[1] https://github.com/pkgcore/pkgdev
[2] https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0076.html

-- 
Arthur Zamarin
arthurzam@g.o
Gentoo Linux developer (Python, Arch Teams, GURU, pkgcore stack)