Re: Best Practices: Uploaders field
On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:
> On 2015-06-07, Paul Gevers wrote:
>> Please explain next time that you ALSO added yourself to the Uploaders
>> in d/control. Only after reading the contributers page of bpo did I
>> realize why you probably did it (I assume you keep an eye on [1]). If
>> not for that reason, I would rather not have that change.
>
> I've seen it mentioned a few times where people add themselves to
> backports and then get critiqued for it, which seems a little
> inconsistant with the section defining "Best Practices" on the
> "Contribute" page.
>
> http://backports.debian.org/Contribute/#index12h3
>
> Seems like to me either the Contribute page should either remove this
> suggestion, or people should stop asking for this to be removed from
> packaging in sponsorship requests.
>
> I don't have strong opinions either way, but there are enough challenges
> for peole to package a backport correctly... sponsors should at least
> respond consistantly with the "Best Practices" listed on the
> "Contribute" page.
The page in question tells backporters to either add themselves to the
Uploaders field in d/control, or subscribe to the package. I suppose
some folks have a stronger preference for the latter instead of the
former.
FWIW, I don't have any strong preferences either way, and I'm happy to
sponsor packages regardless of whether my sponsoree chooses to put
his/her name into d/control as Uploader, or not. I personally do not
do so myself when I backport packages (but I tend to backport my own
packages more often than not, so I'm already listed in d/control
anyways).
However, in general I do want to point out that many sponsors often
have different sets of criteria that they use to evaluate packages to
sponsor (beyond the minimal set of requirements imposed by DFSG,
Policy, and ftpmasters), although this is much less visible here on
-backports compared to say, -mentors. I agree that this can be
frustrating for sponsorees. On the other hand, I can sympathise with
sponsors as well; to me, signing a package with your gpg key and
uploading it means that you are certifying this package to be in good
shape and suitable for the archive. If you don't believe that's true,
well, you may want to impose additional requirements.
> Interestingly enough, I don't see a mention of "Minimal Changes
> Necessary" in the "Best Practices" section, which seems like one of the
> main best practices for backports...
Quoting the very same page: "Do always look at the interdiff between
the testing version and the backports version, keep in mind that it
should be as minimal as possible."
Regards,
Vincent
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