Re: Description of tasks (was: -= PROPOSAL =- Release sarge with amd64)
* martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> [2004-07-14 11:29]:
> And even if someone would like to apply for a role position, s/he is
> going to have a real hard time to judge the extent of the commitment
> required because the jobs are sparsely (if at all) documented.
> My point is that I think there should be documents describing the
> role positions and their exact extents. [...] Such a document must
> be able to convey the extent of the job and allow someone with
> enthusiasm and time to get up to speed in short time.
I fully agree that we need better documentation outlining the roles of
our delegates (and other functions [*]), the tasks they perform
exactly and how they are being performed. This will increase
transparency, hopefully attract more volunteers and probably increase
the burden on the people performing roles since other people would
understand their tasks better (for example, I reckon that a document
explaining what is being done during NEW processing would decrease the
number of packages that have to be rejected because maintainers could
use that document as a checklist for their packages before uploading).
The question of more documentation also came up during the DPL debates
and I'm certainly committed to working on this. At the same time,
people have to understand that (in the short run) documenting the
procedures will take away time from the delegates which they could
spend on performing their tasks. Thinking about this issue during the
last few days, I have decided to appoint a specific delegate who will
work with our delegates to work on this documentation. This will
ensure that the documentation will get done and that the delegates'
roles are still being performed. More on that soon on d-d-announce.
[*] I don't think this is limited to delegates. There are many other
areas in the project which need better documentation. I've seen a
growing number of packages include debian/README.NMU files to document
important knowledge which is useful for non-maintainers of a package
performing an upload. I think it's important to document your own
packaging procedures so other people can follow them when they help
out with your package. For one of my packages, I have a fairly
detailed README file in SVN documenting how new releases are being
made. I can only encourage other maintainers to do the same.
--
Martin Michlmayr
leader@debian.org
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