Re: Too much disruptive NMUs
On 24/05/10 at 09:31 +0200, Ricardo Mones wrote:
>
> Hi Lucas,
>
> [Though not very active, I'm subscribed to QA ;-)]
>
> On Sun, 23 May 2010 19:22:07 +0200
> Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:
>
> > On 23/05/10 at 12:32 +0200, Ricardo Mones wrote:
> > > On Sun, 23 May 2010 08:40:44 +0200
> > > Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > > This one is not even fixing a serious bug:
> > > >
> > > > So? NMUs are not only for serious bugs.
> > >
> > > Then, as Ana said, the developers reference should be changed because
> > > that's just the opposite of the first point in 5.11.1 "When and how to
> > > do an NMU": «Does your NMU really fix bugs? Fixing cosmetic issues or
> > > changing the packaging style in NMUs is discouraged.»
> >
> > I think that this should be read as "NMUIng when your only changes are
> > cosmetic issues is discouraged". If you are doing an NMU anyway (to fix
> > a real bug), I don't think that it should be discouraged to fix other
> > small issues at the same time, if those changes are reasonable.
>
> At this moment those small issues (if we take the original posting
> examples) are not issues at all but packaging preferences and
> lintian I/W tags (most of them).
Most of them. But both uploads also included real bug fixes.
> While is perfect to have them cleared, I think a lot of active
> maintainers would complain if you change that when fixing a bug in
> NMU, because that's not the point of a NMU.
In those examples, the maintainers are inactive. Let's stick to the
cases we have, and let's not start about "what if the maintainer was
active?"
> Only inactive don't
> because they don't really care about the package.
parse error ;)
> That should be
> telling them it's the hour of taking care or orphaning the package,
> and so they should be informed. The NMU way, even if done correctly,
> only hides the real problem here.
No. The real problem is the quality of our packages, not the fact that
some maintainers are less active than others. Of course, it would be
nice if every package had a maintainer that care about it, but that's
just not possible, and I don't think that most of our users care.
NMU is a quick and easy process to improve the quality of neglected
packages. We have other processes, like MIA and the "should be package
be orphaned/removed?" process, that enable to switch maintainers when a
maintainer is nonresponsive. Those processes are much longer, and do not
result in an immediate increase of the quality of packages. So the right
thing to do, in the case of Jari and Nobuhiro, is to NMU _and_ make sure
that the MIA process is going on for those maintainers. Which is what
they did.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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