Re: Making better use of multiple maintainers
On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 07:55:43PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> During the base freeze preparations in the last few weeks, a problem
> Debian has always had became apparent again. Since Debian is a
> distributed, volunteer run project it is hard to tell whether a maintainer
> is doing Debian work at the moment. In the freeze, it is often crucial to
> get a bug fixed within a very short period of time. If the maintainer
> doesn't respond to e-mail immediately, you can either wait or make an NMU.
> The former is problematic since it might delay the freeze and the latter
> might break the package, which in turn would cause a delay (Of course NMUs
> don't always break the package but the likelihood of breaking a package is
> higher if you don't know the package well). A feature has recently been
> implemented in dpkg/katie which could solve this problem (along with a
> couple of others) if deployed properly.
>
> In Debian, a package usually has one maintainer. When someone other than
> the maintainer makes a source upload, katie recognizes the upload as an
> NMU and tags the bugs as fixed instead of closing them. Since some
> packages have multiple maintainers, an Uploaders field (in debian/control)
> has been introduced in dpkg 1.9.13 (see #101815) -- katie now also checks
> this field in order to determine if the upload is an NMU.
>
> What I'm basically proposing is that it would be nice if packages had a
> backup maintainer or two listed in the Uploaders field. The maintainer
> could ask someone with whom he works together well and whom he trusts if
> he wants to co-maintain the package. The maintainer would still act as
> the package's official maintainer, but the other one can act as a backup
> when the main maintainer is busy or on vacation.
>
> I think we should try to implement that scheme at least for packages in
> base and standard... but why not go ahead and try to do it for all
> packages?
Seconded.
--
Eric VAN BUGGENHAUT "Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards!"
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