Re: Are Martin and Sam's platforms equivalent?
On 2019/03/30 00:16, Sean Whitton wrote:
> On Fri 29 Mar 2019 at 04:43PM +02, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>> 2. Package sponsorship
>> Any mentoring outreach aimed at finding new contributors should start
>> with no longer frustrating the people who have already started to
>> contribute. They might stop their contributions.
>> There are too few people reviewing packages at sponsorship-requests,
>> but proper and timely reviews would be very important both for not
>> frustrating new contributors and ensuring that new contributors
>> are learning to do high-quality packaging.
>> Spending any resources on finding new contributors who are starting
>> at zero doesn't really make sense as long as people who are already
>> contributing have to wait months for getting their ITPs reviewed
>> and uploaded (and then have to wait additional months while the
>> package is in NEW).
>
> This is a huge problem, indeed.
>
> The two current processes that you identify as getting in newcomers' w
ay
> -- RFS bugs and the NEW queue -- are slow simply because of the fact
> that both of them are understaffed. It's the usual problem with Debia
n
> not having the manpower we would like to have.
>
> The question is whether those processes could be changed such that the
> manpower problem would be less keenly felt. I cannot myself see any w
ay
> to achieve that -- there are tooling issues but improving the relevant
tools would not significantly speed either queue.
I acknowledge that it's a problem, but I don't agree that much that it's
a *huge* problem.
Here are the RFS bugs list:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=sponsorship-requests;d
ist=unstable
Those 30 bugs which close ITPs are all reasonably recent (most bug
numbers start with 92...), and since we're in deep freeze they will
naturally be low priority.
That leaves 14 requests, of which one introduces a removed package back
to the archive, one would cause a transition, and a few of those have
been addressed and are going trough discussion / solving issues.
That leaves less than 10 packages that need reviewing right now. I do
think that reviewing/sponsoring should be a lot better, and that more
DDs should play their part, and that our tooling can improve to bring
more visibility to these requests, but I would classify this more as a
medium priority problem TBH... hmm, am I being pedantic about
classification of problems... I digress..
More packages moving to teams have been a great thing for Debian, I
think we should leverage that more for sponsorship requests. It would be
nice if a DD looked at their DDPO page and it would also show
outstanding sponsorship requests for the teams they're part of. It's
great that the DDPO pages now show outstanding merge requests from salsa
in the VCS column, I would've probably missed the few MRs I've received
so far if it wasn't for that.
If a quarter of active DDs checked the RFS list / mentors.debian.net
just once a month and reviewed a package, there would probably be no
problem in terms of waiting to get a package sponsored whatsoever, I
think we could do more to advertise the todo list, maybe a weekly report
to debian-devel like the WNPP report may work well.
In the #debian-python IRC channel, when a sponsorship request lands
there it goes in to the channel topic. I admit that I often forget to
look there myself, but there are small changes like that that could
become a project-wide cultural habbit that might also help bring
attention to sponsorship requests.
Well, that's just my views as a DD who thinks this is important and this
is an area I'd like to put some focus on regardless of the DPL elections
.
-Jonathan
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.
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