Re: Science Subgroups [was Re: Debian Math Team]
Hi folks
From this discussion it seems that the main advantages of separate teams are
- bespoke views of packages via tracker/dppo/udd
- mailing lists where the signal:noise is higher (if you're lucky)
However, the disadvantages of separate teams are
- differing conventions in each team around VCS layout, interactions etc
- niceties around team upload vs NMU reduces the number of people who feel
able to help with the packages
- fewer people looking at packages across the inevitably-smaller teams
Separate teams are optimised for the "main" maintainer of a handful of
packages who doesn't routinely work on any other packages; they are optimised
_against_ bugsquashers, generalists or people trying to land big projects
across large sets of packages.
These are some of the biggest annoyances of package maintenance in Debian and
are what make it very hard to produce a good quality distribution.
Collectively, we need to make big changes on a regular basis (GCC bumps, large
transitions, Python 2 removal, ...) and for each of them we need people to be
able to work on lots of packages with minimal friction. In the recent Python 2
removal work, for instance, it was easy for me to work on debian-science
packages as I've been a team member since the dawn of time. Working with
packages in the smaller teams was *much* more work involving additional git
dances, MRs or BTS round-trips. There were also fewer people looking at those
packages and it was more likely that there was lots of outstanding QA work,
unpackaged upstream versions and packages effectively maintained by NMU.
We should remember that having blends packages, blends web pages and
informative wiki pages are completely independent of having a defined team with
separate VCS and mailing list. All that needs is one or more people to curate
them.
On Tuesday, 2 November 2021 20:55:47 AEDT Timo Röhling wrote:
[...]
> As one of the "instigators" of the new Debian Robotics Team, I like
> this idea very much and we will adopt it, too.
That's excellent news :)
> Jochen and I also discussed that we would like to consider the
> Robotics Team more of a subgroup of the Science Team rather than a
> completely independent team.
I think that's an excellent idea!
> Maybe this concept might also work for the Math Team and other
> science-related groups?
Yes please!
I believe that we should think of this as good practice for maintenance of
scientific software in Debian and that we should encourage all the other
science-related teams to do this.
Scientific software in Debian has a bit of a reputation problem that stems from
many different causes that include upstream motivations, the vagaries of
research funding, non-expert development work… but also because we are spread
too thinly in Debian maintenance and many of our teams are nothing more than a
VCS namespace and not actual teams.
Making subgroups with a common way of working (i.e. policy) and having more
permissive salsa configurations could help us a lot.
cheers
Stuart
--
Stuart Prescott http://www.nanonanonano.net/ stuart@nanonanonano.net
Debian Developer http://www.debian.org/ stuart@debian.org
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