[csw-maintainers] NMUs, non-maintainer uploads

[Maciej (Matchek) Bliziński]

2013/4/12 Peter FELECAN <pfelecan at opencsw.org>:
> In the pkginfo file we have this:
>
> VENDOR=http://leocad.googlecode.com/files/ packaged for CSW by Peter Felecan
> EMAIL=pfelecan at opencsw.org
>
> We should have:
>
> VENDOR=http://leocad.googlecode.com/files/
> EMAIL=pfelecan at opencsw.org
> ...
> OPENCSW_MAINTAINERS=Peter Felecan, Dagobert Michelsen
>
> The last variable contain the values of the multi-valuated attribute
> "maintainer". The user uploading the package is the value of the
> attribute "NMU" --- when I'm writing about "attribute" I'm thinking to
> the packages database schema.

One more distinction: The user who uploads the package doesn't have to
be the same user who ran "mgar package". So we have:

1. users who are long-term maintainers of a given package
2. user who ran "mgar package"
3. user who uploaded the package (ran csw-upload-pkg)

> The variable in the pkginfo file is generated at packaging time.
>
> The attributes are valuated at upload time.

We can no longer modify the package contents at upload time, and I'm
guessing we want everything to be inside the package.

> Does it seems reasonable?
>
> What thinks our data-base czar but not less enlightened colleague? :-)

Looks like nobody wants to claim the title of DB czar! So I'll chime in.

The list of maintainers needs to be in one of the pkginfo fields,
that's simple. But I think it should be a list of user names, or a
list of valid (rich) email addresses:

OPENCSW_MAINTAINERS=joe, jane

or

OPENCSW_MAINTAINERS=Joe Doe <joe at example.com>, Jane Dow <jane at example.com>

One more thing: different people have different attitudes towards
different packages. There are packages that are simple libraries,
there's little technical decisions involved there, e.g. Perl or Python
modules. You just build them, push them out, done. But then there are
larger packages, such as Perl or Python themselves, where there are
big decisions involved. For example, the horrible patch[1] for Python
that has screwed us up big time. Library rebuilds - I don't care,
anyone who wants can rebuild them. But screwing up Python like in [1]
‒ over my dead body. So I'd put my name up as the Python package
maintainer, but not for Python modules. The package's maintainer list
has to be optional.

Maciej

[1] https://gar.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gar/csw/mgar/pkg/lang-python/python/trunk/files/site.diff