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Re: Emphasize teams, not packages



[Jonas Smedegaard]
> It is too hard to read the changelogs where it is (or at least should
> be) clearly documented who from a team did what parts of the
> packaging.

I agree that it's too hard, but I don't agree with the rest of that.
The debian changelog doesn't typically say much about who's doing the
testing, who's reproducing the bugs, who's forwarding bugs upstream and
working with upstream to resolve them, and several other tasks the
debian maintainer is expected to do.  Nor does the debian changelog
typically give an accurate picture of how easy or hard each line item
was to achieve.  Nor does it explain anything about whether the person
who added the line items got them right or wrong, whether anyone else
is covering for his mistakes before a package is finally uploaded.

Much fuller pictures emerge from the combined logs of the version
control system and the BTS, but estimating who is doing "most of the
work" on a package based on *those* logs is a tedious and subjective
process.

This tedious and subjective process isn't something I'd expect an AM or
DAM to want to undertake.  Particularly when an example of solo
maintenance is available to analyse instead.  The most "credit" I'd
expect any NM candidate to get from a team-maintained package is a few
words of endorsement from co-maintainers.


> > > I think Debian needs to emphasize teams packaging, not just
> > > individuals for many reasons.
> > 
> > We've had this conversation already.  So I'll skip it.
> 
> Please provide a reference to that discussion.

google://site:lists.debian.org+team+maintenance

The first hit is a great example,
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/08/msg00712.html and a rather
long thread following.

The fat subthread starting at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg01055.html is another.

It surprises me that you missed both of those threads.  If you are
interested in promoting team maintenance, I suggest you read them in
the archives, to avoid repetition.  Team maintenance, and the
advantages and disadvantages thereof, is a very old and tired subject.

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