Re: Bug#799748: ITP: ember -- 3D client framework for the WorldForge project
On 22/09/15 06:22, Olek Wojnar wrote:
> This package is being reintroduced into Debian. It was previously maintained
> by the Games Team and will continue to be maintained that way. It was removed
> by Bugs #797418, #563768, #682332, #760058 due to the GCC 5 transition. The
> problems that caused it to be removed will be corrected before it is uploaded
> again.
After those problems have been corrected, will you continue to maintain
ember and the rest of the WorldForge-related packages in the longer
term, and ensure that they do not become a burden to other developers? I
ask because in the 16 years that ember was in the archive, it had a
total of 7 uploads, of which 2 NMUs and at least 3 maintainer uploads
were to fix release-critical bugs. That isn't a particularly good ratio
of maintainer's time used : other people's time used.
This is not intended as a veto - hopefully you'll have more time for it
than its previous maintainers - but I felt that before it is
reintroduced, I should specifically point out that every time a package
fails to build from source or is otherwise RC-buggy, and every time it
blocks a transition, it is creating work for people other than its
maintainer.
While team maintenance is of course A Good Thing, I'm not sure that
having "the games team" as a co-maintainer mitigates this very much; the
wide range of game technologies and styles maintained by that team mean
that it is relatively unlikely that a random games-team member knows how
to fix and test a random games-team package (or indeed has any interest
in that random package).
Based on the history of ember and its dependencies, it seems fairly
likely that developers with an interest in the archive as a whole (QA
team, release team, ftpmasters) will respond to any RC bugs that aren't
fixed promptly by just removing it again.
S
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