Ana Guerrero <ana@debian.org> writes:
>
> It is good to care for packages from people who are currently too busy and
> making NMUs to fix critical/very important bugs. However, lately I have been
> seeing a lot of NMUs that are being very disruptive
Hi Ana,
The packages I took under close look have been carefully selected and
any possible "active" were either contacted or notified about the
upcoming NMU. I also participated #debian-qa to ask for MIA of certain
people when in doubt.
Via email, those that I contacted, were happy to responded "OK" with the
changes.
We've coordinated the uploads with Tony during period of 3 months, for
the upcoming release. The uploads were always put to DELAYED/NN, and
extra time (14 days) were given for some packaged for developers to
react.
The debian/changes lists may look "verbose", but the actual chages are
really minor. I prefer explicit changelogs so that peer-review is
possible.
In addition to fixing the RC bugs, minor updates were usually done at
the same time. This was done for the reasons that in case the packages
were later orphaned or the maintainer were MIA, it would be more
desireable to have a well shaped package in archive. The minor changes
include:
- update to latest debhelper (In many times no debian/rules changes;
possibly update deprecated dh_clean to dh_prep")
- use packaging format 3.0 (delete quilt if it was used)
- update compat to 7
The DEP1 does't specifially encourage fixing anything else than the BUG
at hand, and that's a very good rule for actively maintained packages.
However these uploads you were seeing were for packages that:
- had very old bugs
- or were not actively maintained (developer not seen in years).
So I felt a "shaping up" would be in the spirit of good maintenance.
Jari
[1] http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep1.html