Re: upstream concerns
On Mon, Jul 26, 1999 at 02:51:54PM +0200, Francesco Tapparo wrote:
> I'm maintaining scwm; Greg Badros, an upstream author, contacted me about
> the page http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/pa/lscwm.html. This page is a bit
> misleading:
>
> "Maintainer for scwm is Francesco Tapparo <cesco@debian.org>. "
>
> He would like better something as:
> "Scwm is written by Greg J. Badros and Maciej Stachowiak.
> Scwm's home web site is: scwm.mit.edu.
> The maintainer for the Debian scwm package is Francesco Tapparo..."
>
It is well understood that 'maintainer' in the above refers to the
person who maintains the Debian package.
> and links to the upstream scwm page.
>
We have wanted the ability to easily create links to the upstream
maintainers site for ages. Unfortunately, we don't currently have a
mechanism for easily finding this info. Until that happens, such links
won't be created automatically. :(
If the upstream author would like links added to the description
(which are simply taken from the description the maintainer writes),
then he should ask the package maintainer.
BTW, many authors of software like our current system so that bug reports
get filtered through the package maintainer. The maintainer can then
filter packaging problems from the reports so the author doesn't get
burdened with Debian specific problems.
> I agree with Greg. So I think would be very useful if the script generating
> the pages would be updated to properly use an "Upstream Maintainer/s" and an
> "Upstream Web Page" fields in the packages.
> Is this feasible or it's hard? I'm not sure I've the needed skillful for
> the job (I do'nt master html), but I can try.
>
As stated above, it is simply a matter of being able to find the info.
Actually putting the information on the web page is trivial. The fields
you describe don't exist. I have asked many times for a way to
unambiguously access such info, but to no avail (adding it to the Packages
files is not the way to go. They are too big already).
Jay Treacy
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