Re: On maintainers not responding to bugs
Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 05:35:43PM +0000, Jon Dowland wrote:
>
> wow, I'm really amazed. For the KDE and Gnome teams (and I'm sure
> others did it as well) there was mails requesting help to triage bugs
> and so on (from january 2006). Reading this thread could let people
> believe that those teams neved did that, and always denied they needed
> help. Well, sorry if I don't like the sound of that, but I really don't
> because it's at the antipodes of the reality.
Reading this thread makes me think that people are not aware that
those teams have requested help.
> Like every packaging team in debian, mailing the pkg-$team@l.a.d.o or
> debian-$team@l.d.o depending on how old the team is. Usually that list
> is in the Maintainer or Uploaders field of the control file.
> #debian-$team is also a good place to look. Those things are _obvious_.
Do you expect potential helpers to search various list archives or
mail maintainers to ask whether they need help? I would guess only
people who have a specific issue with a package they want to get fixed
would do that.
>> One way is the existing wnpp system.
>> <http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested> lists
>> packages which have RFH filed. This list is very short and
>> doesn't seem to include the examples which have been put
>> forward in this thread at all.
>>
>> For such packages, where triage would be needed, would it
>> not make sense to file an RFH bug to that effect?
>
> The mails I alluded to earlier (to seek for help) have seen (at least
> for the KDE guys, I'll let the Gnome guys tell you how it worked for
> them) 0 answer. My experience is that RFH bugs works well when Norbert
> put it on vim to ask for co-maitenance or such very interesting software
> to package. But when the job is to deal with KDE bugs, there is really
> less people eager to do the job.
What does it hurt to file a RFH bug? At least it is a centralized
platform where potential helpers can find out about who need help.
And it is a logical place for that. And the list is posted weekly on
-devel.
What it probably needs is a link from
<http://www.debian.org/intro/help> to make it more obvious for people
not yet familiar with Debian.
>
> Again, I do not appreciate the latent criticism of the big teams to
> hide their understaff problem. It's blatantly bogus hence iritating,
> almost insulting.
Don't you wonder why it is perceived like that?
Matthias
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