Re: DEP1: Clarifying policies and workflows for Non Maintainer Uploads (NMUs)
On 30/05/08 at 17:38 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> Le Fri, May 30, 2008 at 09:45:57AM +0200, Bas Wijnen a écrit :
> >
> > Yes, communication is good. We have several media for it, the two most
> > important ones being mailing lists and the BTS (IMO). This DEP proposes
> > to use the BTS for communication about NMUs. It was that way already
> > AFAIK, although some people seem to think private mail was needed as
> > well. To avoid any confusion, we should make it explicit in any case.
> > If many people think private mail is needed before uploading to DELAYED,
> > please speak up and we'll require that. To me, that would pretty much
> > disable all usability of DELAYED, but that may be just me...
>
> Hi Bas, Richard, Lucas,
>
> the DEP says:
>
> - must use BTS,
> - usage of DELAYED is recommended.
>
> This means that people can opt out using DELAYED, but must post something
> in the BTS. I think that the problem is not whether the communication is
> public in the BTS or private, it is that "something the BTS" does not
> imply communication. One can send a patch to the BTS and upload a NMU
> without ever asking if it is welcome. Therefore I would much prefer that
> the DEP clarifies this by writing that the use of DELAYED is mandatory
> if the NMUer does not ask if the upload is welcome.
Let's state clearly what we agree on (I think):
- Communicating through the BTS is OK
- Giving some time to the maintainer to react is recommended.
Now, what we don't agree on:
- I think that giving some time should only be very strongly
recommended, but not mandatory.
- You think that giving some time should be mandatory.
I think that our opinions are basically the same. The difference is that
you want to write something in stone, while I prefer not to impose rules
where it's not necessary, because:
- Debian developers are generally smart people.
- Debian developers usually do sensible things.
- Debian developers don't try to circumvent recommendations unless
there's a very good reason to.
- If you make it mandatory, then you have to provide a workaround for
cases where it's just not possible to wait. And you also have to list
those cases.
I really don't think that the fact that it's recommended to give some
time to the maintainer, rather than mandatory, will result in more
cases where the NMUer would not give some time to the maintainer. I
think that we should leave the DEP like that, and reconsider later if we
discover that many people are actually abusing that.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
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