Re: Improper NMU (Re: NMU for libquota-perl)
On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 11:13:07PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 02:19:03PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> > A NMU is a waste of effort if the same thing can be done by the maintainer
> > after just one quick email message -- primarily a waste of effort for the
> > NMUer who has to go in and figure out how to fix the package, not the
> > maintainer. If we can save others that time by doing what we're simply
> > supposed to do, well, I see no reason not to do that.
>
> This argument is bogus. Updating a Build-Depends and rebuilding the
> package is trivial (not least because the system is designed to make
> it trivial).
It still requires effort by the non-maintainer to get the sources, fiddle
with it a little bit, recompile, and upload. Two minutes, sure, but two
minutes that could have been spent fixing #155939. ;)
> Also, in general, it's hard to create a suitable patch and send it to
> the BTS, and trivial to apply the patch and build the package.
Just letting the maintainer know about the problem is enough, at least in
some cases, no need to go out of your way and prepare a ready-made fix.
> And lastly, am I the only one who finds complaining about *other
> people* wasting effort to be insane in a volunteer-based organisation?
> There's a difference between advice, and telling people what to spend
> their time on.
Every time someone NMUs someone else's package just like that, the
(supposed-to-be) maintainer's desire to maintain the package drops by a
little bit. They get discouraged by the fact nobody's asking them anything
about stuff that supposed to be theirs, so they get a feeling nobody needs
them. Joey has ranted about this before :) and I must say I can see why
someone could feel this way.
Perhaps in the case of a simple recompile, there's no reason to worry about.
But if we use this to start not requiring any communication with a
maintainer prior to NMUs, the situation might evolve into a state where it
really is a problem.
I think that recompile-NMUs should be done like the xmms 1.2.7-1.1 one was
done. That one had a decent amount of advance notice to the maintainer, and
was still done fast enough to prevent more than five or six duplicate bugs
from being filed.
I'm willing to bet that the NMUer wasn't unhappy with how things turned out
in that case. I can vouch that the maintainer was happy, too. ;)
IMHO, YMMV.
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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