Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-packaging (214 mails)

[Stefan Seyfried <stefan.seyfried@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dave,

On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 21:17:45 +0200
Dave Plater <davejplater@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I've had problems submitting a package fix to KDE:Extra before but in
> that case the maintainers reply was rather rude that issue was simply
> bad communication and was resolved and that particular maintainer
> accepted my second submit attempt of KTrafficAnalyzer pointing out that
> there wasn't a Url: in the spec file and asking me to fix it. I decided
> to patch the released tarball to svn 44 and submit that along with the
> fixed spec file but alas the first anti subversion maintainer caught the
> request and declined it.

hehe ;-)

> I was under the assumption that I'm helping to make openSUSE a better
> distribution but my encounters with KDE:Extra have made me think that
> that particular repository is an ego circus, it's easier to get a new
> package into Factory than into KDE:Extra,

<sarcasm>
This is because of the known perfectness of all the KDE packages in the
distribution, which always get shipped without bugs, thus the need to keep
unqualified contributors out to not lessen the overall product quality.
</sarcasm>

(The KDE guys know me, so the above paragraph should not surprise them,
 and they can hit me on the head on the oS Conf anyway ;-)

I don't know KDE:Extra in particular, but almost every repository is some
kind of ego trip of somebody. I found out when I tried to fix ~50 packages
in devel:languages:$_$>$<$| (name changed to protect the guilty), where I
was (politely, though) told, that I have to obey the powers that be,
submit them one by one, have to use
$SPECIAL_TOOL_FOR_CREATING_AND_CLEANING_UP_SPECFILES (which I had already
done where appropriate, even though I had to fix that tool first...), how
to tie my shoes and how to package in general. As if I did not know that
since a decade (almost, I'm exaggerating as always). So I decided that I
rather do that once I have spare time, because the fixed packages are
living well one of my home repos, no urgent need to push them upstream.

But I digress.

The only exception to that "my repo is my castle and I am the absolute
ruler on it" is Base:System which is so big that nobody is really able to
police it.
Just try to get your package into Base:System.
(Just kidding.)

Now serious:
Writing here was a good first step. People will notice and even the one
maintainer who was a bit quick with rejecting your submissions will know
the reasoning now.
With only build service submit requests, it is sometimes hard to discuss
the issues, a mailing list is much better for that.
In general, a "no version updates for stable products" (I don't know how
KDE:Extras fits here, but I think it is also some kind of semi-official
add-on-repo for additional KDE packages) policy is useful.
But with a good reason: "shipped version is clearly broken, a backport of
the fix is not possible with reasonable efforts (means: it's not a trivial
fix) and the package is a leaf package which means this update does not
cause us to rebuild half of the other packages in the repo", this should
be possible.

Hey, I've been able to get BlueZ version updates past coolo in almost-RC
state, so there is a way to do it :-)

> I've two new packages in 11.3
> one of them totally new to openSUSE and one that the previous maintainer
> didn't have time for so it was dropped so I speak from experience.
> The point of this email are the questions :- am I flogging a dead horse
> trying to be a useful member of the community? Why do I get the
> impression that KDE:Extra is maintained a an exclusive club?

Maybe right now, it is an exclusive club. But there is no reason for you
not being part of that club. And I'm pretty sure: once they know that you
are doing a good job with your package, they will be much less restrictive
on what they allow.

I mean - there's always a personal note to that packaging thing, because
it is also some kind of a "ring of trust": there are people out there
whose submitrequests to "my" packages I accept almost without looking at
the diff (usually I only look at it to find out which strange thing they
tried, and which caused them to find a bug, that I did not try ;) and
there are the "unknown" (to me) contributors, where I look more thoroughly
what they are doing.
This might be unjust to the "unknowns", and in reality the numbers of
rejected submissions from "knowns" and "unknowns" is in the same order, so
they are of comparable "quality", but I think it is just natural that you
give "friends" some credit.

(BTW: this is probably also true for my above rant about my
      submissions to that devel:languages:... project: I'm not really
      known for packaging those modules, so it's quite natural that I got
      the "new contributor"-lecture first.)

> Thanks for taking the time to read my rant.

Nothing better to read than a good rant at the early morning ;-)

Have fun, and good luck with your package
-- 
Stefan Seyfried

"Any ideas, John?"
"Well, surrounding them's out."
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