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Re: finally end single-person maintainership



Quoting Bill Allombert (2024-04-08 23:49:05)
> Le Sun, Apr 07, 2024 at 11:37:47PM +0200, Gioele Barabucci a écrit :
> > On 07/04/24 23:11, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > > > What is your opinion about pushing logtool to Salsa?
> > > 
> > > Not speaking for logtool obviously, but maintaining simple packages on salsa is
> > > just useless bureaucracy.
> > 
> > As a contributor, having a package on salsa is extremely useful, far from
> > "useless".
> > 
> > By clicking on "fork" (or running the equivalent CLI command) I get a copy
> > of the package, with all its history, a Debian-specific CI, the ability to
> > work on different features or bug fixes at the same time and independently
> > from one another, the possibility to send a merge request, that can be
> > annotate line-by-line by all other Debian contributors.
> > 
> > A package with a repo on salsa is sending a clean message: go away, I don't
> > want your contribution.
> 
> I suppose you meant _without_. The message is not "your contribution is
> not wanted" but rather "your contribution is not needed because there
> nothing to do".
> 
> They are hundred of other packages where your contribution would
> make a difference.
> 
> Simple packages need someone who is responsible and responsive for them
> in the long run and know there history much more than needing sporadic
> contributions.

we need both. Domain specific knowledge is clearly very important and I'm not
trying to argue against it. But doing packaging in a way such that it becomes
easy for others to contribute is *also* every important. As the maintainer of a
package with expert knowledge of it you might think that there is nothing to do
but you while you are the expert for that package, you might not be the expert
on topics like cross building, reproducible builds, multiarch, build profiles,
merged-/usr, build hardening and many other topics which span the whole
distribution. There are people who are heavily invested in these topics and who
will want to touch very many packages to fix things. It should be made easy for
them to make these contributions without them bit-rotting as a patch in the BTS
for months or years. I'm not saying that *you* let these contributions bit-rot.
This is meant as a general argument for making it easier to make large-scale
changes to packages. Diversity in our packaging styles and strong package
ownership sometimes work contrary to issues affecting very many packages across
our distro.

That you, as the expert on your specific package think that there is nothing to
do, is not necessarily true in the larger scope of maintaining the
distribution.

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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