Hi Ana,
I'm happy to start the discussion.
I sponsored the upload of a number of Jari's fixes. You state that they
were disruptive, but I'm wondering to whom. The uploads were to delayed
queues and the maintainer notified via the BTS, and in all cases where
the maintainer actually ACK'd the bug report or NMU, we discussed the
matter with the maintainer and/or removed the NMU from the delayed queue.
In most cases (it may be all for the packages Jari and I worked on), the
maintainers never responded whatsoever to bug reports that were over a
year old, nor to the intent to NMU, so in a sense they could be
considered them QA uploads. I.e., if a developer can't be bothered to
even respond to a bug in the Debian BTS, then the package is essentially
orphaned. Freshening the packaging to generic best practices (or
perhaps a better term is "defacto standards") - e.g. going to the quilt
source format (which changes almost nothing), using a modern version of
debhelper, freshening a debian/watch file, or adding standard fields to
debian/control - makes things easier for everyone involved, whether it
be Debian QA or the maintainer (should he or she every opt to reengage).
I view the "absolute minimal changes" NMU process as designed for (and
more appropriate for) actively maintained packages. That is, the NMU
process assumes that there is a developer on the other end who actually
maintains the package. I do agree that the work, all of which were
either FTBFS or transition-related, could have been coordinated through
Debian QA. In hindsight that may have been a better approach. I am
interested to hear QA's perspective; is it QA that finds the uploads
disruptive?
Thank you,
tony
On 05/22/2010 06:07 AM, Ana Guerrero wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> It is good to care for packages from people who are currently too busy and
> making NMUs to fix critical/very important bugs. However, lately I have been
> seeing a lot of NMUs that are being very disruptive [0], you have a couple of
> examples below [1]. (This is not against Jari or Nobihuro, they are just the
> latest examples I have seen today).
>
> I know this is done with the best intentions but if you think the package
> is in bad shape or neglected by the maintainer then it might better write
> to mia@, debian-qa@ or open a bug asking whether the package should be
> orphaned (or even removed). Both examples below are candidates to be orphaned.
>
> If you think this kind of changes are good, please start a discussion about
> changing this in the developers-reference.
>
> Ana
>
>
> [0] http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/pkgs.html#nmu
>
> [1]
>
> This one is not even fixing a serious bug:
>
> Format: 1.8
> Date: Tue, 04 May 2010 21:39:32 +0300
> Source: xwrits
> Binary: xwrits
> Architecture: source i386
> Version: 2.21-6.1
> Distribution: unstable
> Urgency: low
> Maintainer: Helen Faulkner <helen@debian.org>
> Changed-By: Jari Aalto <jari.aalto@cante.net>
> Description:
> xwrits - reminds you to take a break from typing
> Closes: 579038
> Changes:
> xwrits (2.21-6.1) unstable; urgency=low
> .
> [ Jari Aalto ]
> * Non-maintainer upload.
> - Move to packaging format "3.0 (quilt)".
> * debian/clean
> - Mew file.
> * debian/compat
> - New file.
> * debian/control
> - (Build-Depends): update obsolete xutils to xutils-dev.
> (important; Closes: #579038). Remove *-1 version suffix
> from texinfo dependency. Update to debhelper 7.1.
> - (Depends): add ${misc:Depends}.
> - (Homepage): New field.
> - (Standards-Version): update to 3.8.4.
> * debian/copyright
> - Update layout and point to GPL-2.
> * debian/rules
> - Delete EOL whitespaces.
> - (DH_COMPAT): Remove.
> - (install): Update dh_clean to dh_prep.
> - (clean): Fix lintian debian-rules-ignores-make-clean-error.
> * debian/source/format
> - New file.
> * debian/watch
> - New file.
> * xwrits.1
> - Fix hyphens.
>
> -----------
>
> Format: 1.8
> Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 11:28:10 +0900
> Source: a2ps
> Binary: a2ps
> Architecture: source i386
> Version: 1:4.14-1.1
> Distribution: unstable
> Urgency: low
> Maintainer: Masayuki Hatta (mhatta) <mhatta@debian.org>
> Changed-By: Nobuhiro Iwamatsu <iwamatsu@debian.org>
> Description:
> a2ps - GNU a2ps - 'Anything to PostScript' converter and pretty-printer
> Closes: 487183 507293 547907 557775 571571
> Changes:
> a2ps (1:4.14-1.1) unstable; urgency=low
> .
> * Non-maintainer upload.
> * Update debian/control.
> - Bump Standards-Version to 3.8.4
> - Update Build-Depends on debhelper 7
> - Update Depends on emacs23 instead of emacs22. (Closes: #571571)
> * Add debian/source/format.
> Set source format to "1.0".
> * Update debian/compat to 7
> * Update debian/copyright
> - Add year of Copyright.
> - Fix copyright-without-copyright-notice lintian warning.
> * Update debian/rules
> - Remove -k from dh_clean
> - Remove usr/share/info/dir after installing.
> * Add new patches.
> - Fix patch-system-but-direct-changes-in-diff
> 06_encoding_texi.dpatch, 07_a2ps_info.dpatch
> - Fix manpage-has-errors-from-man.
> 08_man.dpatch
> * Update debian/emacsen-startup.
> (Closes: #557775, #507293, #547907, #487183)
>
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