Re: Too much disruptive NMUs
On 22/05/10 at 15:07 +0200, 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.
Our standard process for addressing issues with such packages is the MIA
process. However, the MIA process takes quite a lot of time, and it has
happen in the past that it was completely stalled due to a lack of
manpower. Also, there are cases where the maintainer will respond to the
MIA team, preventing the orphaning of his packages, despite not working
on his packages.
So, I think that preparing an NMU that fixes small problems in the
package at the same time as contacting the MIA team is a good thing. It
helps to improve the quality of Debian, and alleviates the problem of
temporarily busy maintainer.
I'd like to encourage Jari and Nobihuro to continue that work, but to
make sure that:
- they contact the MIA team about the maintainers of the packages they
NMU
- the packages they NMU are really _useful_ and should be kept in Debian
- they don't NMU actively maintained packages by mistake. If there are
documented efforts to contact the maintainer, using the DELAYED queue
with a long delay would help with that.
(Note that I witnessed one of Jari's uploads, and the procedure he
followed was fine in that regard).
> This one is not even fixing a serious bug:
So? NMUs are not only for serious bugs.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
Reply to: