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reith
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2015
Posts: 16
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 Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2016 12:15 pm Post subject: The state of Package maintenance |
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Hi all,
I think there is a problem with package maintenance. I have several open requests for package bumps or simple ebuild patches in bugzilla but no one took a look at them. I can keep them in a custom overlay but It's not my preference; I think if a package is in tree, It's supposed to be supported by Gentoo. My submitted requests are for packages net-analyzer/tsung, app-laptop/thinkfan and dev-lang/erlang and they do have maintainers. So:
1) How and where one can make some noise to attract some attention for his change/requests?
2) Is there a policy for changing status of packages based on inactivity on open issues sent to bugzilla? Notifying maintainer, adding those to orphaned packages list or deleting them from package tree?
In the end, I know package maintenance Is a time consuming task and Gentoo is not attracting much active community around itself. My big thanks to all Gentoo developers and maintainers; I want to just understand problems and solutions. |
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charles17
Advocate
Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 3685
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2016 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: The state of Package maintenance |
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| reith wrote: | | 1) How and where one can make some noise to attract some attention for his change/requests? |
Maybe this wiki article is what you are looking for?
It tells how to add your improvements to Gentoo pull requests. |
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reith
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2015
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 7:35 am Post subject: Re: The state of Package maintenance |
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Thanks! I didn't know Gentoo repo is accepting PRs from users now!
I'll send PRs for issues I can solve myself, like version bump or minor USE changes, but it won't solve the real problem which is there is no way to ask package maintainers take a look on bugs assigned in bugzilla, and if they don't, the package will remain in active state while they are really orphan. |
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charles17
Advocate
Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 3685
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 8:51 am Post subject: Re: The state of Package maintenance |
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| reith wrote: | | ... there is no way to ask package maintainers take a look on bugs assigned in bugzilla ... |
Isn't the maintainer always being mailed once a comment is added to a bug? |
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reith
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2015
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 10:26 am Post subject: Re: The state of Package maintenance |
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| charles17 wrote: | | Isn't the maintainer always being mailed once a comment is added to a bug? |
I don't know, I had put comments on bugzilla thread but nothing happened. It may because those projects are not very popular.. BTW, I see a Github bot for Gentoo repository, puts a `need-assignment` label when package maintainer is not on Github; this is a good action and I expected something similar happened for bugzilla e.g. If no activity come for open requests, a label set and a manager check things. |
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Hu
Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2007
Posts: 23037
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 6:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Bugzilla has user settable preferences for whether to e-mail an account in reaction to activity on a bug associated with that account. Some users may have chosen not to receive bugmail, or may have a mail client filter that stores it somewhere they do not read often. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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Case in point: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=588080
Upstream has "upstream stable" releases and says it will soon take down the tarball for the only non-live ebuild.
What do we hear from the maintainer? Crickets!
Makes me wonder why Sven and I bothered testing and submitting ebuilds. |
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reith
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2015
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 10:57 am Post subject: |
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| Hu wrote: | | Bugzilla has user settable preferences for whether to e-mail an account in reaction to activity on a bug associated with that account. Some users may have chosen not to receive bugmail, or may have a mail client filter that stores it somewhere they do not read often. |
I think being a package maintainer is taking responsibility for hearing and taking actions. If someone preferred to not hear, that is problem. He gave users and community wrong assumption of care taking and by consequence possible new volunteers don't know where is a need for contribution. For example I can become a proxy maintainer or maintainer for those small packages that I still use, but they are not known as orphan packages.
It may help to have plan for making some managements and decisions based on number of requests or inactivities for packages.
Again I'm very grateful of all efforts by past and current maintainers for their important and volunteer works, but I'm afraid current methodology be flawed and harm user experiences in future. |
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reith
n00b
Joined: 13 Nov 2015
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:25 am Post subject: |
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| I just saw Maintainership requests document and found a process for taking actions. I see most Maintainership request bugs are still in UNCONFIRMED state, but I should test it myself. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9331
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| Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:39 am Post subject: Re: The state of Package maintenance |
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| reith wrote: | | I'll send PRs for issues I can solve myself, like version bump or minor USE changes |
As you may have seen by now, with PRs you get feedback to make improvements to the ebuilds, sometimes to fix pre-existing mistakes or to raise to newer standards. You'll get to know the git workflow and gradually improve your ebuild writing skills. |
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Tony0945
Watchman
Joined: 25 Jul 2006
Posts: 5127
Location: Illinois, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2016 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Two posts in this thread were moved to the dustbin. Does anyone know why? |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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