Re: Four days
Hi all,
I'm not involved in either mentoring nor creating...just lurking on
the mailing list. :-)
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 00:21, Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> wrote:
> An expansion...
>
> I used to do regular reviews of every unanswered recent RFS. Mostly I
> stopped doing those due to lack of time. After a while doing them got
> demotivating due to the amount of problems with most packages and the
> lack of response to issues, or if there was a response there were a
> few things fixed but everything else ignored. During this my policy
> was to not sponsor any packages, just to improve their quality.
>
> If mentors.d.n were to gain the quality metrics stuff planned for
> debexpo, perhaps the average quality of RFS entries would go up and
> reviewing and uploading packages would be enjoyable again. If that
> were to happen I would definitely set the metrics I would like to see
> in my profile and look at packages that met those criteria.
But about Paul's message, one thing that would be nice to have is a
checklist or a "decision tree" for people to submit proposed packages.
I did look through the documentation on how to create a package and
it is complete...but as with all things that are complete, it is also
a bit verbose. :-) But besides the checklist already there, perhaps
have one which has "yes/no" questions and if they are all yes', then
it's time to find a sponsor. If a mentor finds out they were lax in
following the checklist, then maybe consider a temporary "black
list"...i.e., they can't ask for a sponsor for a fixed amount of time
or a particular package is blocked for a fixed amount of time. Seems
worrying if mentors' time is being abused...maybe it is ok now [???]
but if things continue, then their time could be used for other things
(i.e., replying on this mailing list, which was the start of this
thread?).
> Another demotivator is people who treat the archive as a dumping
> ground for their pet package; do a one-shot upload to get it in and
> essentially leave it orphaned after that. I tried to avoid that by
> having a policy of not sponsoring anything, but I still have a few
> such packages on my DDPO page. I'm not sure how to avoid that but
> actually upload stuff regularly.
I also have another question as someone who is just a user and
probably doesn't know much. But are packages that are uploaded into
Debian ever removed? I've used Debian for many years and I think it
is great how all the packages work together flawlessly, but one minor
annoyance is the number of packages that do the same thing. Having a
choice is always great, but one cannot tell if a package is actively
maintained or was someone's "pet package" that isn't looked after
anymore.
Or maybe there is an option to "aptitude" that lists the packages in
order of last update?
Even so, I haven't heard of a way for neglected packages to leave
Debian. Is it possible or is it because distribution by CDs and even
DVDs is disappearing, it doesn't matter anymore?
Just a few thoughts...thanks!
Ray
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