Re: Shouldn't we have more ftp masters ?

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Benjamin Seidenberg]
> FYI:
> 12:33 < Ganneff> and for all those impatient waiting for NEW: i will
>                  clear that in my jetlag time, in those nights i
>                  cant sleep (ie 1st -> 2nd june, 2-> 3) :)

Sounds good, but do not really addresses the fundamental problem here,
which is that NEW processing at the moment is fragile and stops
completely when the single person handling NEW is busy elsewhere.

There are a lot of work in Debian depending on regular processing of
NEW packages (transitions, fixing dependencies, fixing build issues,
preparations for the stable release, etc), and we should thus strive
to make the processing as robust as possible to avoid slowing down
these processes.

Unfortunately I have no practical suggestion on how to improve it.
Adding more ftpmaster and -assistants might be one approach.
Improving the tools to handle new source packages differently from old
source packages with new package names (typically library renames etc)
might be another.  I do not know the procedures well enough to make
educated guesses. :)

The NEW processing have made progress the last few years, so I am
confident that we are moving in the right direction.  For examle the
transparency added not too long ago with the creation of
<URL:http://ftp-master.debian.org/new.html> helps me a lot when I
decide when to upload and when to expect my uploaded packages to make
it into the archive.  I really appreciate that, though I wish the
dates of individual uploads was shown and the sorting order was
different.  This are though minor issues, compared to the situation
earlier, when almost no-one knew the current NEW status.

Friendly,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen