Let's be friends. (Non-maintainer uploads made easier)
(In a discussion about uploading non-maintainer releases of procps, Christoph
wrote):
> On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Joey Hess wrote:
>
> > Does this new version have support for color? The current procps does, but I
> > got the impression that was an experimental patch only in the debian
> > version. I'd really hate to go back to ps and top w/o color, now that I'm
> > used to it.
>
> As already discussed on irc: No color support. And joey already has a
> version done better than mine. We really need that inofficial repository
> to be able to see what others have done.
Well, I much rather see an official way to make non-maintainer uploads
easier. With the "_one_ maintainer who really owns the package" policy now
upgrading to a new lic6, fixing bugs, etc is sometimes difficult.
Speaking *only* for myself, I wouldn't mind if someone did non-maintainer
uploads when I don't reply to email-questions about upgrades (i.e., I'm
on holiday, seriously ill, or whatever). I have a very strong feeling most
developers actually feel that way.
Taking the easing non-maintainer upload idea somewhat further would be
for each package to have
- one maintainer (just as now)
- a number of "friends" of the package, appointed by the maintainer.
Friends would be people trusted by the maintainer, who he generaly
feels the would equally well at making non-maintainer uploads.
With this, I would say, for example
Package: axe
Maintainer: joost witteveen
Friends: all debian maintainers
But if Helmut feels libc6 is really essential, and should be handled
only by a more narrow set of people, he might have:
Package: libc6
Maintainer: Helmut Geyer
Friends: Guy Maor, David Engel
This way, we leave the freadom to the package maintainer himself, and
allow him to select whether he wants more people to be able to upload
"official Friend"-releases (as opposed to "unofficial Non-maintainer"
releases).
I would be very interested in hearing from developpers, how
big they would make the "friends" group of their packages.
If most developers would say "Friends=nobody", then we essentially
have the current policy, and adding all this friends bussines is
useless. If all developpers would say "Friends=everybody", then
apparently we should modify the general non-maintainer policy, and
we word the non-maintainer releases differently. But I suspect that
there will be many people in between (or differences of opinion), and
that will be where the "Friends" idea comes handy: then everybody
can decide for himself.
Note that, although it would be usefull to add a "Friends" field to
the .deb package format, it could at first easily be done by, for example
adding this information to the www.debian.org packages pages. So, initially
we don't need to modify dpkg for it.
Also note, that the main difference between "maintainer" and "friend"
in this idea is not who is allowed to make official releases, both are.
The difference is that the maintainer is allowed to pick his "friends".
The friends are morally obliged to discuss things with the maintainer
before uploading a new version. In case of any disagreement between
maintainer and a "friend", the maintainer can always re-upload his
version, and remove the rebelious "friend" form the package's Friends
list.
So, "Let's be friends!"
--
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
My spamfilter is so good, it correctly catches 90% of incoming spam,
*including* all email from my PhD supervisor.
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