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Re: How to submit patches?



Hi,

Emmanuel Arias <emmanuelarias30@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Martin,
>
> When I submit a patch, first I prepare a NMU patch, then submit that patch
> to bts. If the bug does not exist I create it and attach the patch.
>

Please don't prepare NMUs unless you're planning to upload an NMU, and
please don't submit NMUdiffs unless an NMU is justified.  NMUs are an
aggressive action that carries the following connotations: 1) the
maintainer has been unresponsive for what would be considered a
reasonable amount of time for the severity of a bug  2) the maintainer
is poorly maintaining the package  3) the maintainer might be poorly
maintaining other packages.  So yeah, negative...some people feel
insulted and/or attacked by such an action.  See also:
https://wiki.debian.org/NonMaintainerUpload

Of course, this is not the case when the maintainer has set themselves
as lowNMU ;-)

Instead, increment the Debian revision.  1-1 becomes 1-2 for non-native;
1 becomes 1.1 for native if a decimal point was used, otherwise it might
be more conventional to just increment to 2.  I'm not sure because the
only native package I've worked on uses decimals.  Leave the distro as
'UNRELEASED'. I also like to use the

 [ My Name ]
 * Do not write "Non Maintainer upload here".
 * Item 1.
 * Item 2.
 * etc.

format, to save the maintainer time in case they haven't enabled
DEBCHANGE_MULTIMAINT=yes in devscripts.conf--otherwise, if they don't
manually add your name you'll disappear from the changelog entry.

> But I would wait for a more experienced opinion :)
>

Another option is to fork the salsa repo, file an MR, and post the MR
URL to the bug (the info in the previous section also applies here).
IMHO it's worth setting the patch flag with the "Control: tag -1 +patch"
pseudoheader for both debdiffs/git-format-patches and MRs.

I hope this email doesn't come across as harsh...my concern is that the
response to NMUs is usually negaive, and the social outcome can be that
everyone involved becomes demotivated.

To all new contributors reading this: please don't mention NMUs in the
bug, nor intend to upload NMUs, nor use NMU version numbers, unless an
NMU is justified.  Oh, and to be fair, I also used to think that NMUs
were ok as something like "democratic contributions for the good of
Debian"; however, I was wrong.  Patches are OK, premature NMUs are not.
And why not mention that you're willing to do an NMU early on?  Well,
strictly speaking, this is permitted, eg: "if you're busy, I'd be happy
to NMU, but I'd rather not", but the effect of this is that it puts
pressure on the maintainer to take action, to avoid the stigma of an
NMU.  If the case doesn't merit this, it's simply not nice :-)

Have fun!
Nicholas

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