[ This is going to be the only public e-mail about this issue. Any reply
should be mailed to me personally as the Mail-Followup-To header
indicates. So please respect the header and contact me in private if you
have some question, comments or want to help.]
Hello,
as some might have noticed there hasn't been any new feature or major
bugfix release of dput in the last time. There are two reasons for this
situation:
Some of the bugs that have been reported about dput can't be fixed in
the current version without rewrites of major parts of dput. Also there
are certain feature request which involve adding even more new code to
the current monolithic base. And that is also the second reason. The
current code is very much monolithic and only a minor part of is
modularized. Therefor adding new features is not easy and makes the code
more difficult to understand.
I've long played to rewrite dput and make it more modular. Partly I
started the development for this rewrite and at least some basis is
established. (A little bit of code and a design document). But I wasn't
able to finish the rewrite, due to the fact that I lack knowledge and
experience in programming. [1] I don't intent to change the situation by
gathering more experience or learning more about programming, but
instead asking for help and looking for one or two people to help write
and maintain dput.
Since dput has become a quite important tool, altough some people in the
past discouraged my efforts to write dput and even some people might
still dislike dput, I think the status quo about dput should be changed.
This won't mean that I give dput completely away or orphan it. Instead
I'll like to have one or two people with python knowledge, programming
experience (and a bit of free time for another package) participate in
the development and maintaince of dput. [2] I would still be around and
help with the maintaince of dput and maybe even write a bit of code for
it. So anyone who is using dput or would be interested to help change
the current situation, please contact me in private. Also all questions
about this e-mail, dput and it's current status should be send in
private.
Christian
[1] I have enough knowledge to maintain the current dput package and fix
quite some of the bugs, but it's not enough to fix all bugs. Also my
knowledge about python and programming isn't enough for a complete
rewrite of dput.
[2] This is not exclusive development and maintaince. If anyone feels
that he only wants to help with the maintaince and someone else would
like to help only with the development, that shouldn't be a problem.
--
Debian Developer (http://www.debian.org)
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