Re: RFC: DEP-3: Patch Tagging Guidelines

[Reinhard Tartler <siretart@debian.org>]

"Thijs Kinkhorst" <thijs@debian.org> writes:

>> Possible benefits (partly mentioned in the spec)
>>
>> - tools can be adapted/crafted to maintain these fields
>> - streamline development practice to faciliate team communication
>> - (web)tools can analyse and produce statistics..
>
> This is still quite abstract: "streamline development practice to
> faciliate team communication", what does this mean? I haven't yet needed
> any tool to type the freeform text above our patches. Indeed, statistics
> can be made, but the real benefit in statistics is the conclusions that
> are drawn from them. Until now the advantages remain in vague terms. Can
> we make it more specific what the "streamlining" is or what use there
> would be of statistics on this metadata?

What I meant is that IME, patch files are hardly documented at all, and
even if they are, not all required information is available. Most of the
fields are not necessary if you work alone on a package, right. But if
you join a team, see a team maintained package with patches in it, you
immediately start asking yourself about the patch purpose, status in
debian and upstream and so on. Having the format here standardised
streamlines the workflow in the sense that:

 - all required information is availabe
 - no need to ask the last developer on the package about patch status,
   upstream submission, etc
 - encourages finally documenting the patches.

In some way, yes, properly maintaining these fields does require some
work. If you're working alone on the package, I agree that maintaining
that information does not bring a direct benefit to you. Most benefits
in this DEP are for the team (and in some ways debian) maintaining the
package.

What we can and should be discussed is what fields are absolutely
required to maintain.  Most of the fields are optional for good reason,
but given nevertheless in the spec to define semantics on them, which is
good IMO. The set of required fields seems reasonable to me.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4