Chmouel Boudjnah [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] writes:
> Just trying to pry into Mandrake's inner workings to appease my curiosity..
>
> How do packages get updated? Are package mantainers required to keep on
> freshmeat or application mailing lists for the packages they're responsible
> for? Are there dedicated package maintainers for pieces of software?
>
> I ask all these things because I have noticed that it seems like Mandrake is
> depending on posts from users to alert them to package updates. This seems
> a little re-active, rather than pro-active, as a Linux distribution should
> be.
No we do NOT depend on posts from users for new versions. Please have a
look at the changelog list and compare the number of version updates to
the number of people pointing updates to us.
This happens only in two cases:
. a user is having a constant eye in a very particular package, or even is
part of the development team, and alerts us before we notice the update;
it will save, say, 1 or 2 days; actually it's not the useful
. a MandrakeSoft package maintener is not taking care of his packages.
unfortunately, it happens.. we're working on it, but currently the
packages are "distributed" and sometimes some guys are not happy with
that..
. we're in freeze and won't make version updates (this happens often!)
Roughly, the packages from the "main" are distributed to the developpers,
so we have two "jobs".
I've asked to have some dedicated "package mainteners", but it happens
that people get frustrated if they only work on packaging.
--
Guillaume Cottenceau
