Re: NMU's

[Christopher C Chimelis <chris@classnet.med.miami.edu>]

On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, chris mckillop wrote:

> So, in my efforts to be useful.....
> 
> 	I would like to help hunt out and squash some of the bugs currently
> listed on bugs.debian.org.  However, it would seem that a little caution
> is in order.   How should I approach submitting the fixes I perform?  Should
> I simply do them as a patch sent to the maintainer or can I repackage them
> and dupload 'em?  Also, can I just start nailing bugs I think I can 
> chase out or is there a more formal method of declaring war on a given
> bug?  With people talking about release, I figure more and more of us
> should be approaching the huge number of outstanding "issues" listed.
> 
> 	Now, the other thing I could be doing is adopting some packages.
> What do people think?  Time better spent making what we have run better
> or time spent becoming a full maintainer of something?

It may be helpful for everyone (including yourself) to start out fixing
the bugs that you feel you can fix.  I know this helped me become more
familiar with the Debian packaging tools and how things are done in
general.  Once I tackled a few bugs (I'm an Alpha porter, FYI, so bug
squashing is my primary duty), I moved on to maintain two packages.  The
experience of patching things helped me greatly in maintaining my
packages now.

As to how you should handle bug fixes and patches, please submit them to
the maintainer via the bug tracking system.  I rarely email the
maintainers directly, fyi, but it can be done if no responce from your BTS
submission is found in a few weeks.  Source NMUs are a last resort for us
since the affect of such patches on other architectures is often hard to
predict.  I know I only do a source NMU if I haven't received a responce
from the maintainer in over a month or two.

In short, direct your efforts to where you feel you could be the most
helpful.  If you choose to adopt an orphaned package right away, feel free
to email to the arch-specific lists prior to duploading the package to see
if they can compile it.  Most of us are friendly folk and would be happier
if we can pre-test the package before upload rather than submitting bug
reports after the fact :-)

C