On 11/02/2010 07:44 PM, Stephan Kleine wrote:
On Tuesday November 2 2010 21:37:56 Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 11/02/2010 04:24 PM, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
hi,
simple answer: you need to define a maintenance policy for contrib.
the current policy is the same as the distro. that means no version updates just backports after contrib got frozen for a distro release.
if you leave it open for version update you have no real stable base for people to work with.
I did not mean to imply that the policy for contrib should change. It should be a stable/frozen repo as it is today.
For example, a developer at company X that writes perl code for their application shouldn't have to add devel:languages:perl to get perl-critic as the developer now uses a moving repo and one zypper up could potentially cause major issues. (Just to stick to the example that I already used).
if you keep the current policy many people wouldnt have the resources or time to maintain all the packages with that policy. thats why many people dont want their packages in the distro or contrib. (me included)
I am trying to find a way to make it easier for people to get their packages into the "stable/frozen" world. I think this will encourage contributions. Maybe we need another per package flag, "OK_FOR_CONTRIB" lets the packager indicate this package can be auto collected.
That leaves out the main issue. The stuff in Contrib is version frozen and therefore any security fixes need to be backported and the packages in there need to be maintained.
Agreed.
Who will do that? If the original submitter is willing to do that he prolly will already submit it to Contrib
This is where I disagree. I am saying that the process of getting a package into Contrib or Factory is not as straight forward as it should be. There are too many steps. To get something into contrib or factory one has to - create the package(s) in home: - submit to a devel project - get added to the list of maintainers for the devel project - submit the package(s) again to factory or contrib Submitting the same stuff multiple times is not intuitive. I would guess most people will stop after the first submit step even if they are willing to do the maintenance work. This just means that the package never sees "the light of day", meaning the package is not available to users that do not add devel repos to their system. When I contribute a patch to a project I only submit the patch once, if I only care that it gets into the development tree which eventually gets released. All I have to do is the development work, create the patch, and submit it to a mailing list, attach to bug report, or send it to someone with commit access. One patch one commit, simple. This is the way it should be with packages. If I create a package and am willing to maintain it I should be able to get the package into :Factory or :Contrib without having to do multiple submit requests for the same package (plus get added to some "magic" list of users of a given devel project)
so I don't see how that will change besides collecting more unmaintained packages in Contrib which isn't really what we should want.
I am not advocating to have more packages for the sake of having more packages. Packages in :Factory and :Contrib should be of high quality and be maintained. No question about it. Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Software Engineer Consultant LINUX rschweikert@novell.com 781-464-8147 Novell Making IT Work As One -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+help@opensuse.org