Maintainership, vanishing or absent maintainers (QA)
I'm trying to revive Debian QA. With the growing number of new
maintainers showing interst in general QA for Debian it seems useful
that one of the 'old' maintainers shows direction.
However if it works and we have a working QA team we need to discuss
ways the QA team is allowed to upload packages. They need to be able
to work on apparently orphaned packages even if the maintainer hasn't
orphaned the package.
The following is extracted from a text Vincent Renardias wrote in
February 1997. I'm not modifying it in order to be able to discuss it
properly. Please keep in mind that parts of it may be out dated by
now.
Regards,
Joey
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* Bugfix upload policy:
* Maintained packages: Send fixes to their maintainers, and eventually
upload the fixed version if no feedback from the maintainer.
(see "uploads delays" below)
* Orphaned packages:
Bugfix uploads can be done any time by DQAG members.
Call for a maintainer on debian-devel;
If no-one found after 1 month:
- Important packages (ie: "required" or "standard"):
The package will be maintained by DQAG until a maintainer is found.
- Unimportant packages:
If there's still no-one volunteering to take care of them
after this delay, they'll be dropped in the section 'project/orphaned'.
* Takeover uploads delays:
After a patch is posted by the DQAG to a maintainer, how long
will the DQAG wait before uploading the package if the maintainer does
not do the upload himself?
Delays :
- critical security fix: 2 days.
- security fix: 7 days.
- bug fix: 30 days.
(Fix a bug reported in the bug tracking system or RFE)
- cosmetic fix: 45 days.
(typo. in man page, core file in source package,...)
NB: "cosmetic fixes" are uploaded to "unstable" only; (neither "stable" nor "frozen").
The above delays are reduced by a factor of 2 in the month preceding a freeze.
During a freeze: Delay for security fixes (those announced on <security@debian.org>): 1 day.
Other fixes: 1 week.
[Are these delays too long/too short?]
DQAG members making bugfix uploads will need not only to respect the delays above
but will also have to announce their intent to upload on <debian-QA> with a cc: to the
maintainer at least 2 days (or 1 day
during a freeze) before to do the upload, saying which Package_Version they will upload,
and the serial numbers of the bugs fixed by the upload.
The 'Maintainer' field of those uploaded packages will stay unchanged.
However if DQAG members make 3 consecutive bugfix uploads with still no action
from the package maintainer, then the 'Maintainer' field will be set to
"Orphaned Package <debian-QA@lists.debian.org>", and the package will be considered as
orphaned (this will be announced on <debian-devel>).
- work on "stable" and "unstable" distributions:
--
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Please always Cc to me when replying to me on the lists.
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