Re: buildd administration
Ingo Juergensmann <ij@2005.bluespice.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 04:35:14PM +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
>
>> >> > What problems are there today with buildd administration, please?
>> >> One obvious problem is that there is no documented contact address (just
>> >> search for "buildd" on http://www.debian.org/intro/organization). One
>> >> has to know by some magic who is responsible for which architecture.
>> > Well, there are mail aliasses for each arch following the
>> > $arch@buildd.debian.org scheme, but don't expect miracles from it (beside
>> > that sometimes problems seem to just go away silently ;)).
>> http://bugs.debian.org/342548
>> Why hasn't that been done before? Where else should this be documented?
>
> Well, Steve wrote lately about the $arch@b.d.o mails:
> "AIUI, the <arch>@buildd.debian.org addresses have a ridiculously low S:N
> ratio due to spam;
This is a problem, but IMO not a justification for simply saying: No, we
don't provide any contact address.
> moreover, they already receive build logs for each failed
> package build, and are generally quite capable of figuring out the source of
> a failure on their own, so receiving a second mail about a failure that's
> still in their inbox isn't necessarily all that useful."
That's a problem either of educating the people that want to contact
buildd admin's (to only do it when necessary), or of having enough
persons behind that role account $arch@b.d.o. Remember that we all
receive superfluos mails as maintainers, like "Hey, I also found out
that your package cannot be installed, and I'm the 3rd one of them who
doesn't check whether a bug has already been filed". I assume if
appropriate information is available, people caring about buildd
failures are more likely to understand when it's time to contact the
buildd admin, then random users when to report a bug.
Moreover, even if the admins are capable to figure out problems on their
own, the maintainer and porters also deserve information. It's
demotivating to not get any response when you ask for help a couple of
times, try to reproduce the error in your environment without success,
and not even be notified how the problem has finally been solved by the
buildd admin.
>> > Another possible resource might be http://www.buildd.net/ </adv> ;) - I try
>> > to keep the information there as uptodate as possible, but it depends on the
>> > will to cowork with the buildd admins/porters, too.
>> Ah, that's even better, there's actual names behind the buildd's. I'll
>> add that to the patch.
>
> OTOH, some people seem to disagree with you:
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=265142
I don't understand - this was about adding a link to buildd net to
developer.php, I'm talking about documenting buildd admin's contact
addresses in intro/organization.
> I think that people should choose theirselves what they think is the
> best resource for them to find the needed information... ;)
I do think that too, but in order to allow that those resources must be
made public. I haven't found buildd.net useful for me in the past,
either, but I didn't know that it's the only place to get the names and
e-mail of buildd admin's. The latter information should be available at
some other place than buildd.net itself; maybe not only
intro/organization, but also the developer's reference.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer
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