Guidelines for preparing AM reports
Here are some guidelines on how to prepare AM reports. This should be
seen in addition to the comments I posted about a year ago (see [1]).
When preparing a private AM report, there are a few things to take
into account. First, it's good to provide a short summary at the top.
However, since the whole report has to be read anyway, just
duplicating information from below is a bad idea. In particular,
there has been a trend towards quoting most of the introduction mail
containing the biography at the beginning. While it's fine to do that
in the public report (if the applicant is happy to have all this
information published - my original idea was to just have one
relatively short paragraph, not the whole life story; but I'm happy
either way), duplicating this information in the private report is
bad. Also, I totally ignore public reports (and I think so does
James) so don't put information there which is not in the private
report.
Printable reports
=================
Okay, the next thing (and really the reason for this mail): make sure
your report is printable easily. I personally don't care too much in
which format the report is sent and e.g. can deal with mbox. However,
James likes to print every report in order to read it, and an mbox
file is not particular readable. Hence, I fear that much time is
wasted by James getting the report printed. I could make it printable
for him, but then again, the real solution is to have printable
reports in the first place. I've therefore asked Scott James Remnant
to write a simple script which takes an mbox and generates something
sane: it only includes important headers, strips attachments and has
some "simple threading" (it sorts by date and optionally by Subject as
well - which is useful if you change your Subject depending on whether
you do P&P, T&S, etc). If you have an mbox with all the mails and
take the output of this script then you have a report which needs
little editing. Some editing which would be nice:
- make sure the order is sane (the script only has simple threading).
In particular, move the advocate message and other recommendations
to the top.
- Then have P&P, followed by T&S (the templated version), followed by
T&S (the individual version - review of the package, etc). (Some
people forgot to include the individual T&S logs.)
- If possible, separate these sections clearly by a header like:
===========================================================================
P&P
===========================================================================
- Do include your mails as well, not just those of the applicants. This
makes it easier to read.
- However, if you use the standard template, you don't have to include
that. Just remove it and replace it with "[...]"
The anatomy of private AM reports
=================================
The private AM report should have 4 parts:
- the mail body containing the summary (basically equal to the public
report, just that perhaps the biography section is removed or
shortened, and that the username and forwarding address is included).
- Attachment 1: the printable log (as above)
- Attachment 2: the GPG key (in ASCII)
- Attachment 3: one mbox files with all mails
Do not compress anything, do not use tar.
RSA keys
========
A note about GPG keys: RSA keys are fine as long as they are version 4 or
higher. You can check this the following way:
gpg --export -a 2A5B2B0D > 2A5B2B0D
gpg -vv 2A5B2B0D
This produces a long output cointaining stuff like "version 4, algo 17,
created 974499721, expires 0". version 3 cannot be accepted, version 4 is
fine.
Final comments
==============
I hope these guidelines are acceptable for you; it really makes our
work easier if you follow them. If you have any questions or
suggestions, please don't hesitate to contact me, either in private or
via this list. As usual, I read every single private AM report and
provide feedback to applicants and/or AMs.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2003/debian-newmaint-200303/msg00018.html
--
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com
#!/usr/bin/env python
# Copyright (C) 2004 Scott James Remnant <scott@netsplit.com>
# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
# a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
# "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
# without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
# distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
# permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
# the following conditions:
#
# The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
# included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
#
# THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
# EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
# MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
# IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR
# ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF
# CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
# WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
import email
import email.Errors
import mailbox
import sys
from email.Utils import parsedate_tz, mktime_tz
def print_mail(mail):
for hdr in ( 'from', 'to', 'date', 'subject' ):
if hdr in mail:
print "%s: %s" % (hdr.capitalize(), mail[hdr])
print
first = True
for part in mail.walk():
if not first: print "-" * 20
if part.get_content_type() == "text/plain":
print part.get_payload(decode=True),
first = False
elif part.get_content_maintype() != "multipart":
print "Attachment:"
print "Content-Type:", part.get_content_type()
if part.get_filename():
print "Filename:", part.get_filename()
first = False
def read_mbox(filename):
first = True
mb = open(filename)
mbox = mailbox.UnixMailbox(mb, email.message_from_file)
def sort_mails(a, b):
# Sort by Subject: as well
#ret = cmp(a['subject'], b['subject'])
#if ret: return ret
a_time = mktime_tz(parsedate_tz(a['date']))
b_time = mktime_tz(parsedate_tz(b['date']))
return cmp(a_time, b_time)
mails = list(mbox)
mails.sort(sort_mails)
for mail in mails:
if not first:
print "-" * 76
print
first = False
print_mail(mail)
mb.close()
if __name__ == "__main__":
if len(sys.argv) == 1:
print "Usage: %s <mbox filename>" % sys.argv[0]
sys.exit(1)
for filename in sys.argv[1:]:
read_mbox(filename)
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