On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 11:22 AM, David Bremner
<bremner@debian.org> wrote:
Hi all;
Here are the minutes from the (apparently) annual "mentors-bof", thanks
to Didier Raboud for taking them. It turned into a bit more of a
tutorial session than last year, which I don't think is necessarily a
bad thing. I also attach the LaTeX source for the slides; a pdf is
available (somewhere) on penta.debconf.org.
===========================
QUOTE: Bremner: Gobby is not emacs, it's so sad.
Some statistics:
* 18790 packages are in Sid, amongst which 3036 are non-NMU sponsored
packages. If you use Debian, you are probably needing one of those;
you probably rely on any of them. 946 active DDs, 178 DMs, 906
sponsored people.
OPINION: Bremner: There's a high barrier to be able to upload packages
without a key in the /magic keyring/.
OPINION: Bremner: Know packaging, love packaging, do packaging. This
amount of work is the tiny part of getting packages sponsored.
Bremner: sponsoring as a source for new contributors, not only about new
packages; most of actual DDs have come to Debian trough getting packages
sponsored, this shouldn't be underestimated as a source of future DDs.
Bremner: There are DDs that sponsor, others that don't, various reasons
undermine this.
== The big picture ==
There is sort-of a "command-line" shock: debian-mentors{.*} is not
anywhere close to Launchpad™.
The Mighty Steps to Getting My Package Uploaded:
* Prepare (Close your browser, open a terminal, GAAAAh !? )
* ITP (for new packages, reportbug wnpp)
* go package (get help from #debian-mentors, feedback on your
ITP [probably not positive].
* upload (well, sort-of) to mentors.debian.net : Upload, QA check, …
* File a "Request For Sponsoring" (RFS) against sponsorship-requests. \o/ BTS fun
* Wait, Revise, Wait, Revise, More Wait. This time the feedback is most probably positive.
* Your Package Gets Uploaded™ (or not…)
== "What packages belong in Debian ?" ==
It recently came as a surprise to some that "someone wants a new package
to Debian but it might very well be that `Debian doesn't want it`…"
ITP serves three roles:
* Sanity check incoming packages
* First contact of new contributions with the Debian community
* Mutex to avoid multiple people working on the same
thing. (less important in sponsoring context)
The perception of ITP depends on the side: the filer says "here's the
work I did, I propose it to Debian", while "debian-devel" (if that
exists) understands it as "here's a new package `Debian` will have to
maintain.
Closing RFS's is another (fairly rarely used) feedback mechanism: make
sure feedback is given out soon enough.
== Tracking sponsorship requests in the BTS ==
After this experiment started, there has been been a lot more noise on
the mailing list, but is planned to be improved.
* 28 RC bugs fixed, 172 updates, 69? new packages; quite a successful
experiment.
== Discussion ==
Q: Bottleneck in those steps ^ ? A: Not enough sponsors.
I: Teams are not an administrative barrier, they are probably a resource.
Q: Maybe we are not communicating / enforcing the needed commitment for
new packages: in fact, the lifetime of a package is in measured in
multiple years (unstable->testing->stable->security-> …).
I: Removal of packages doesn't only carry a /technical/ cost, it does
carry a human cost too (users, …).
Q: Do the packages need to be in english? A: Not necessarily, but
description and copyright probably need both for sponsors and
FTP-Masters team.