Hi,
first of all welcome to the Perl group :-)
Nicholas Bamber <nicholas@periapt.co.uk> writes:
Do you mean you have never needed to apply for developershipness?
Not everything I am interested in is a perl module (or even perl) so
I might have to.
Our group has very active sponsors (gregoa++) and does not suffer a lack
from official Debian Developers that I heard some other groups have to
fight with. So at least for Perl modules there is no need to become a
DD unless you want to.
I also would like to point out the Debian Maintainers system [1] that
Debian has introduced some time ago. It allows you to upload selected
packages that you maintain and it is much, much easier to become a
Debian Maintainer compared to becoming a Debian Developer. Of course
you can also become a DM first and then proceed to become a DD.
[1] <http://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer>
Nicholas Bamber <nicholas@periapt.co.uk> writes:
Okay if I understand things it's like this. In general Debian the
prospective package maintainer does the packaging work to the best of
his ability and hands it over to someone with upload privileges. The
person with upload privileges rebuilds and sanity checks the packages
and only if satisfied does he actually upload the package. Further to
that he has the right to set his own additional conditions to make
his life easier - it is after all a thankless and unpaid task. So if
one fulfils all the conditions for generic Debian, but not fulfilled
the conditions for a specific sponsor, then he must redo the work to
the satisfaction of the sponsor (okay the bulk of the effort should
carry across). To the unwise novice this all looks like Debian is
just putting obstacles in his path - that as soon as he reaches one
summit, the clouds part and he realizes he must climb one
more. However it is not thus. Rather the obstacles are there to prove
that the novice is worthy - because many set out on the path and
return disappointed, the obstacles serve to separate the determined
from the less so.
I am sorry if you perceived it this way and I certainly understand that
one can get this impression. As Damyan already explained some of these
are conventions within our group that you could not know beforehand. On
the other hand, joining a packaging group is often recommended to new
beginners, but many only read about this after they have already worked
on the package leading to extra work for them. I just filed two bug
reports [2][3] to make packaging groups a little more visible to new
contributors -- thanks for your suggestion on that. Please do not
hasten to suggest other places where you would like to have seen this
information before.
[2] <http://bugs.debian.org/591702>
[3] <http://bugs.debian.org/591705>
A small warning: gregoa is very thorough in his package review, but he
is not stricter than for his own uploads. (There is a criticism that
Debian is stricter in reviewing packages by non-DDs compared to those
uploaded by DDs and I think there is some truth to that, but this might
a bit off-topic.)
You are of course also welcome on our IRC channel (#debian-perl). Feel
free to ask any questions you might have :-)
Regards,
Ansgar