Re: Better development announcements
Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> For example, I cannot recall an announcement of debconf which explains what
> the tool does, why we should use it and where to find out more information
> (btw, I searched the -devel-announce archives). All packages are supposed
> to use debconf, but many (or, at least, some) developers are not aware of
> this.
Well no. Debconf is recognized by policy as a way for maintainer scripts
to interact by the user, but it is not currently required and only a small
fraction of all packages should need to interact with the user anyway.
I'm sure that I announced debconf when I first released it, over 2 years
ago, but I had to announce it as a new, experimental, and untried tool.
It's difficult to pinpoint when such a thing turns into a fairly solid,
well respected tool. (And in fact the version number hasn't reached 1
yet because there are still things that I want to fix before I consider
it complete.)
> We really have to post more well written announcement to -devel-announce.
> This includes periodic updates about policy changes or proposals (thanks
> to Steve Greenland), new developments (debconf, new debhelper releases
> (DH_COMPAT=1 is deprecated but many people are not aware), autotools-dev),
> and other issues relevant to all developers.
debhelper v1 is only very mildly deprecated. I expect people to move to
later versions as they discover the value of new features only present
in those versions. It costs me little to keep the v1 stuff working, and
once nearly every package has switched I will remove it. This is how I
always handle debhelper transitions (3 other such transitions are
currently in progress). Announcements don't do a lot of good here.
--
see shy jo
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