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Re: Gergely Nagy: enough packaging manpower?



Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@43-1.org> writes:

> while reading algernon's platform I stumbled over the two sentences
> "More packages, more packagers? A solved problem" and "Not raw,
> packaging manpower - with hundreds of people, we have that covered".

> How do you think about the current state of reviewing uploads for
> maintainers without upload privileges (for both new packages and updates
> to existing packages)?

In short: it's poor. While there have been many improvements in that
area (the sponsorship-requests pseudo-package, continuing work on
mentors.d.n, and so on), the manpower there IS lacking. Finding a
sponsor is hard, and often time consuming. Package reviews are a bit
better, as many are more willing to review than to sponsor (especially
since non-uploading members of the -mentors@ list can review too, there
have been and continue to be examples of that, and that's great).

This is one of the areas where we need to find motivated people to help
with reviews and sponsoring, on a regular basis, because right now,
unless the sponsoree can find a team to work with, the whole process
becomes very frustrating, very quickly.

There are many things we can do to improve the situation, ranging from
encouraging more prospective packagers to approach a team first, to
things like improvements[1] to DebExpo that would make it easier for
both teams and sponsorees to achieve the same thing.

I would also love to see a "Review & Mentor" team, something that could
work along and with the NM process, whose task would be to do just what
the name suggests: reivew packages, help find a sponsor (or act as
sponsor, as appropriate) and keep in touch with both sides. It's going
to be a challenge to make this happen, but it's definitely something I
wish to work on.

Nevertheless, I still believe we have a lot of packaging manpower, we
just need to organise and use that manpower better, and turn it from
"raw packaging manpower" into "collaborative packaging manpower".

 [1]: http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2012/Projects#Semantic_Package_Review_Interface_for_mentors.debian.net

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