Re: Bug#799748: ITP: ember -- 3D client framework for the WorldForge project
Am Dienstag, den 22.09.2015, 08:19 +0100 schrieb Simon McVittie:
> On 22/09/15 06:22, Olek Wojnar wrote:
> > This package is being reintroduced into Debian. It was previously
> > maintained
> > by the Games Team and will continue to be maintained that way. It
> > was removed
> > by Bugs #797418, #563768, #682332, #760058 due to the GCC 5
> > transition. The
> > problems that caused it to be removed will be corrected before it
> > is uploaded
> > again.
>
> After those problems have been corrected, will you continue to
> maintain
> ember and the rest of the WorldForge-related packages in the longer
> term, and ensure that they do not become a burden to other
> developers? I
> ask because in the 16 years that ember was in the archive, it had a
> total of 7 uploads, of which 2 NMUs and at least 3 maintainer uploads
> were to fix release-critical bugs. That isn't a particularly good
> ratio
> of maintainer's time used : other people's time used.
>
> This is not intended as a veto - hopefully you'll have more time for
> it
> than its previous maintainers - but I felt that before it is
> reintroduced, I should specifically point out that every time a
> package
> fails to build from source or is otherwise RC-buggy, and every time
> it
> blocks a transition, it is creating work for people other than its
> maintainer.
>
> While team maintenance is of course A Good Thing, I'm not sure that
> having "the games team" as a co-maintainer mitigates this very much;
> the
> wide range of game technologies and styles maintained by that team
> mean
> that it is relatively unlikely that a random games-team member knows
> how
> to fix and test a random games-team package (or indeed has any
> interest
> in that random package).
>
> Based on the history of ember and its dependencies, it seems fairly
> likely that developers with an interest in the archive as a whole (QA
> team, release team, ftpmasters) will respond to any RC bugs that
> aren't
> fixed promptly by just removing it again.
>
> S
>
Hi Simon,
Maybe I chime in..
I'm in contact with Olek since a while regarding the ecosystem around
ember and the wf libraries. I also volunteered to sponsor his work and
the first uploads are currently being prepared.
Yes, the former maintainer was, lets say, problematic, a kind of 51th
shade of MIA. (Responding to pings, promising actions soon, but in the
end nothing happened) This was the main blocker here and Olek didn't
want to offend the maintainer, despite that the packages were de-facto
unmaintained.
So this is the right point of time to get those packages a good
restart, with Olek as maintainer, even if I see another 51th-shade of
MIA in the way -- down the road. (Therefore I would be interested in
general guidance how to handle such pseudo-MIA or selective-MIA: Cases
where the maintainer is active, but still nothing happens at least on
certain packages, even after prodding.)
I'm confident that Olek will maintain the packages adequately.
If not, removal bugs can still be filed, but I prefer to give him the
opportunity to show.
--
tobi
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