Re: mentors.debian.net reloading
>> times, but when I found some of the people here so nice and helpful, I
>> could learn so much. The learning curve is quite long, and I still have
>> so many things to learn.
>>
>> That vote system goes totally on the opposite direction, and
>> blacklisting or discouraging people that are trying to learn is really
>> not a good thing, IMHO.
>>
>
> Yes, I feel the same.
>
>
>>> the service will automatically build and check the package.
>>>
>> Everybody suddenly seems to think that yet another buildd is a great
>> idea. Why is it? During the sponsoring process having a binary package
>> is pretty useless. A sponsor will/should always take the source package,
>> build it again and check both the source and the binary package.
>>
>
> I think It is a great idea because me, as a new user trying to create
> my first debian package, I don't want to waste other's people time.
> What I want is some automatic service, that will automatically check
> my package and tell me - improve this, improve that etc etc.
>
> First, and second - I, and I think it's the same with others, I am
> doing the packaging especially because I want to fix the problem for
> myself. But when I am doing it, of course I want to fix it for others
> too (because that's easy, when I already fixed it for myself). So I
> want to package a new program and use it now - but that's the argument
> for PPA, which I think you agree with.
>
As a longtime software developer (but fairly recent Debian user), my
experience that is when it works for me, that is just the first step on
a long
road. So I am sure that the job of mentors is much more complicated
than just looking over the shoulder of package maintainers. I think it is
also likely that many package maintainers will never become DDs,
because they may be maintaining the package for other distros, or simply
have too much else to do. So I read the original post on this thread to be
asking, "How can we make life easier for _current_ mentors and package
maintainers?"
When I look at the quality of Etch, I believe that it would be best to
tweak
the process instead of introducing major changes. The goal of Debian has
always been to be the premier community distro and the numbers of Debian
users and the success of distros built on it support the claim that it
is achieving
that goal. While there is always room for improvement, if it ain't broke,
don't fix it. If there is no Debian package for an application, then users
should use the application's installation procedure. Anything even
implying
support from the Debian community will create a distraction that will take
focus off of the main goal.
That being said, it would be nice to have something to help people create
Debian packages. IMHO, package management should be limited to the
distro's PM, except in extreme cases. If upstream teams provided packages
of their apps for the major distros, users would be able to follow this
rule
more easily. _And_ there would be a pool of new apps with 'pretty good
packages' already built. I have only looked at it briefly, but the ESP
Package
Manager (http://epmhome.org/index.php, and epm is already a Debian
package) could encourage application teams to create reasonably good
packages for multiple distros. I suggest that those who are concerned
about
new packages look into making sure this creates good Debian packages,
encourage other distros to do the same, and promote it to development teams.
Later . . . Jim
Reply to: