Re: Orphaning of Firebird RDBMS
W liście z nie, 14-12-2003, godz. 07:21, John L. Fjellstad pisze:
> Hi Grzegorz,
>
> I read that you might not have time to work on the maintance of the firebird
> package. I was wondering what kind of work is involved in maintaining a
> debian package?
There's nothing particularry unachievable.
You don't have to be a DD but you should be willing to become one.
For more informations see
1. http://www.debian.org/devel/join/
2. http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint
It takes a longer while to become a DD. Only DDs can upload packages.
But any DD can (theoretically) sponsor your uploads before you become
a DD. I can do this too (I am even willing to do this :)
Then in fact maintaining a package involves (no special order):
1. Making sure that the package has no (serious) bugs:
a) by testing it yourself
b) by solving bugs reported in BTS (http://bugs.debian.org/firebird)
c) making sure the package abides ex. Debian Policy
d) sometimes discussing with others best approaches in packaging
2. Uploading new versions when you're convinced they're ready for masses
3. Taking general care of package and its users (ex. answering some
random questions/inquiries from users or other developers or upstream)
4. Being nice, informative and helpful to upstream developers (ex. when
you've got a bug that's not debian-specific and you don't know how to
handle it yourself - you need to "forward it upstream")
5. Paying attention to software licensing, DFSG compatibility etc. [1]
6. Improving your package and yourself beyond what's _required_ :-)
You're not alone with these tasks. Ex. altough you're not required to
subscribe to debian-devel mailing list - you'll find there a lot of
clues about usual problems, important changes under way that may affect
your package etc. You can ask on debian-newmaint mailing list (to which
you definitely should subscribe) As you'll learn during the New
Maintainer process - there are other means of getting help and
informations.
In summary: you need "to want persistently" :)
All the rest can be derived.
And all in all - it's a lot of fun. A lot of people to meet. A lot of
new things to learn. And a lot of satisfaction - when you have it done.
Cheers,
Grzegorz B. Prokopski
PS: I am willing to discuss these things in a more detailed way with
a person seriously interested in maintaining FB. I'll be glad to help
such a person with my knowledge. I do have some time resources to do it.
[1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
Some other links:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/developers-reference/
http://www.internatif.org/bortzmeyer/debian/sponsor/
--
Grzegorz B. Prokopski <gadek@debian.org>
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org
SableVM - LGPLed JVM http://www.sablevm.org
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