On 2013-04-09 09:23, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > Thanks for this interesting discussion. I think it's an important one to > have, too. >
Hi, > Generally speaking, Debian needs a way to promote best practices, > because there *are* practices that are better than others and uniforming > on them is a way to both improve the quality of our maintenance work and > reduce barriers to contributions [...]. > I am inclined to agree on this. > [...] What we do want to be notified of best practices, is a sort > of "test suite" that yells when we are not following them, as in test > harness situations. I.e.: something very similar to lintian :-) > I can certainly relate to this. > On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 01:28:29AM +0100, Niels Thykier wrote: >> I am not sure we can in general promote the use of 3.0 (quilt) over 1.0 >> via Lintian at the moment[1]. > […] >> [1] Basically it is the same reasons as mentioned in #702671. > > If I'm not mistaken, that reason is the following, right? > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Russ Allbery wrote: >> I agree, but that's not really the point -- the point, rather, was >> that several long-time DDs responded to the suggestion that it become >> mandatory with quite a bit of outrage in debian-devel, and several >> people said that they absolutely refused to add it. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Yes, that is part of it. For me, the second part of it is that Lintian is only effective as long as "everybody" keeps using it. In more detail, please see [1] (which I realise now was not mentioned in #702671). > [...] > Second, the part "long-time DDs" is questionable, as their opinion is not > necessarily more valuable than those of others. It *could* very much be, > due to experience and capacities, but old-timers tend also to be much > more inclined to stay put with old practices, which are not necessarily > the best ones. While I agree with this one, it does not help us if Lintian starts to alienate the "long-time DDs" - it will only weaken our ability to spread these best practises(see above or [1]). > [...] > > Personally, I'd love if the lintian maintainers could assume their > responsibility as promoting the adoption of best-practices. After all, > it is you people who are the first steward of package quality, thanks to > lintian. I do not mind having checks for best practises in Lintian or even writing some of them. Perhaps with an "lintian-style" package or something like that (see [2]) so people can opt-in/opt-out accordingly. Also, even if we (i.e. the Lintian maintainers) don't end up doing it, the coming release of Lintian is expected to close #359059 so the task can "trivially" be delegated to another body. People interested in this can even start working now. I am aware of at least two people/groups who were recently working on their own third-party checks[3]. > [...] if I will ever find myself in disagreement I > can either stop using lintian (with all the associated negative quality > consequences), [...] > > [...] > Hope this helps, > Cheers. > I know I mentioned it (twice) already, but see [1] for why I believe we should avoid putting package maintainers in a position where they would consider that. ~Niels [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2012/01/msg00034.html Particularly: """ I care most about all of the regular Debian developers [...] continuing to use Lintian, so that Lintian can stay as effective as it is now at getting people to make archive-wide changes. """ [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2010/08/msg00012.html [3] Example being ARB: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~bhavi/ubuntu-app-review-board/lintian-arb_profile/changes -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org