Re: Reconsider sending ITP bugs to debian-devel: a new list?
On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 11:05:02AM -0500, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> I concur with Steve. Often, I decide to ignore ITPs, or get annoyed or
> overwhelmed when very prolific teams (hi nodejs!) announce and set to
> package hundreds of packages I won't have any interest on.
Yeah; I often ignore ITPs too. I did sometimes try to give time to them,
and I might do again in the future. The rest of the time, I think they
make the main purpose of the list harder; and that's the problem I'd
like to fix.
> But WNPP is problematic on its own: Right now, we have 1586 normal
> priority open bugs, 4613 wishlist open bugs (what would the difference
> be? It seems *most* normal are O and RFA, while ITPs, RFPs and such
> are mostly wishlist... but it's not entirely consistent) between ITA,
> ITP, O, RFA, RFH. Quite probably, many of them have just slipped of
> anybody's sight and will never be acted upon. Yes, they document work
> needed, but are barely visible for us if we don't explicitly go out
> searching for them.
>
> We have 20 year old RFPs (#119911, even with nice bug numbers!), 17
> year old ITPs (#237925). And this is news to nobody.
Those are serious problems yes, and the more general project of managing
wnpp needs a lot more love. The majority of those problems get no
regular exposure on -devel though, since they aren't brand new ITPs. You
could make the argument that new ITPs get *too much* attention, relative
to these other aspects of caring for wnpp.
> I do, however, find value in getting notices when people file new
> ITPs. It helps me know what people are up to, and makes me notice some
> interesting new things to be on the outlook for.
Me too! What I would like is to have better control over choosing when
and how I do this, versus the current situation where it's entangled
with any other use of -devel.
In general I think I would prefer fewer mailing lists than more¹. But
there are many other jobs/tasks/bits of Debian that could do with more
exposure, and don't have the luxury of being auto-copied to -devel, ITP
has a particularly privileged position here.
I do agree with Steve's point though that practically it would likely
result in few people interacting with ITPs than do now, and that would
be unfortunate. It could possibly be ameliorated by a regular
summary/digest email of to -devel. Quite literally nothing more
sophisticated then a digest mail from a debian-itp list on a weekly
frequency to -devel would, IMHO, greatly improve the readability of
-devel. WDYT?
I don't seem to have consensus amongst developers, so I won't persevere
with the idea unless that changes.
¹ that was actually the driving force behind me trying to consume Debian
lists via NNTP, so I could stop having to subscribe to so many lists;
and also, have easier access to the archives prior to subscribing.
--
👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jmtd@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net
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