Re: Becoming a package maintainer and best practices for porting RPMs from Fedora

[Qianqian Fang <fangqq@gmail.com>]

On 6/8/20 5:44 PM, Rebecca N. Palmer wrote:
> Either including or not including the upstream files is allowed, but 
> including them is usually preferred, unless they are very large.


thank you so much Rebecca. very helpful.

will start working on the packaging files, and send my packaging-related 
questions to the mentors/octave lists (also submitted my access request 
on salsa - although it did not ask me to write anything).

cheers

Qianqian


> If they are included, the packaging repository should have a branch 
> with upstream files only, and a branch with upstream+debian.  The 
> upstream branch can be tarball imports (one commit per release) or a 
> clone of the upstream repository (detailed history).
>
> (And yes, it is a known issue that having so many choices can be 
> confusing, particularly to beginners.)
>
> The git-buildpackage tool can help you with this.
>
> > if I am willing to be the maintainer of my own packages, do I still 
> > need to find a package sponsor (given I am not a maintainer yet)?
>
> Yes: the access levels are
>
> sponsored maintainer (named in Maintainer: or Uploader: of a 
> debian/control but can't upload)
> ->
> Debian Maintainer (can upload their own packages)
> ->
> Debian Developer (can upload any package, including as a sponsor)
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer
>
> > from the above link, one of the paths is to "Join a packaging team", 
> > for example, how do I "join" debian-science or DebianMed?
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/groups/science-team/-/group_members/request_access 
>
>
> > 4. submit an ITP bug
>
> Where possible, this should be the first step; otherwise correct.
>
> > sorry, forgive me for asking these basic questions.
>
> It's arguably a bug that this information is so hard to find.