On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 12:53:10PM +0200, Benjamin BAYART wrote:
> Le Sun, Jun 24, 2007 at 09:50:37PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG:
> > > - then I spend another lot of time proving I'm skilled enough to package
> > > complex stuff unrelated to my current skills (say python stuff, which
> > > I know nothing about, or trying to have a library not breaking
> > > everything in an upgrade)
> >
> > No, you only have to do this if you want to package software and upload
> > it into the archive without review.
>
> Once more, it is the difference between a DD and a DM: a DD is supposed
> to be skilled enough to package/upload any kind of software (at least in
> theory),
In practice this is both stupid and not true. I'm not a java nor a tex
nor a graphic expert, hence am totally unable to package anything
related to any of the three properly.
What is IMHO required of a DD is twofold:
* to adhere to Debian ways and philosophy, and to care about it ;
* to be skilled enough on his areas of interest to package his things
properly and know what he doesn't know, and to ask whoever is
skilled in those matters when needed.
Any people that fit this should be able to be a DD IMHO. There is many
DDs with not so high profile technical skills, but that do an excellent
job and prominent work nonetheless (Hi mister non-technical DD ;P). Just
take an example, I would be greatly surprised if more than 50 DDs are
really aware of all the subtleties of library packaging e.g., and *many*
DDs will never ever package a library (at least, not one that is shared
among more than a handful of packages).
> a DM is supposed to be skilled enough to package/upload the software
> that a DD sponsored him on.
As I read the proposal, I see a DM more like a guy who has a pet
package, uses Debian, hence want to see it in there, but has no real
interest for Debian as a whole (or like some kind of NM workaround, but
I already addresses that, let's forget that option). I'm not sure I'm
very thrilled at the idea of offering upload rights to these people. IOW
I'm not sure that a MOTU-reloaded is that great.
When we take you as an example, I've the feeling that what you want is
doing QA work on a full area of the Debian packages, namely TeX related
packages. A quick survey shows that there is approx. 200 packages in
that area, and DM will never ever give you any power over most of them.
And for the one that are maintained in the TeX team, you will have to
join the packaging team anyway, and to see your changes integrated,
that's all you need. Having uploads rights on the top is not really
needed as soon as there is enough DD's available in the team.
In fact, the more I read the proposal, the more it looks like to favor
the quantity of packages (as DM looks mostly as maintaining packages
alone[0]) rather than on QA or team work that is IMHO the modern way of
packaging and working in Debian, and it feels wrong that the proposal
does not favors that instead.
We need more people, not more packages.
[0] I say that, because in a team, if there is enough DDs, uploads
should not be a real problem, even if the DD(s) in the team
is(are) overloaded, there is plenty of ways to ease the uploads,
like some kind of automatic buildd that pulls from the SCM used,
whichever it is, builds, and ask the DD(s) from the team to sign
the upload once they have looked at the last changes.
I think it would me more interesting to provide such automated
services for packaging teams in alioth. This allows non DD to do
most of the hard work if they want, and only use the DD as an
enabler, with minimal effort on his side.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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