zlin and I got into a discussion about BUGS_TO on IRC, prompted by the plymouth exheres being out of date. Below is a (cleaned) transcript.
The gist is that what the BUGS_TO field currently means is not at all clear. As a community, it's probably true that we wish to avoid the Gentoo bureaucracy of a split between devs/maintainers and users, so we want people to come to the community in general with questions/comments about packages which then anyone interested can answer. It seems to me that perhaps BUGS_TO -- in the absence of active Bugzilla use -- is more meant to indicate a first point of contact for a package (or different points of contact depending on the features of the package) and so should perhaps be renamed to CONTACT. Opinions? ~Alex <parcha> kimrhh: Looks like it hasn't been touched since February... by spoonb (Brett), who doesn't seem to be online... <kimrhh> parcha: ok, he is not here so often anymore unfortunatly <parcha> kimrhh: Yeah, I haven't seen his name around for a long time. I'll send an e-mail asking about it. <kimrhh> parcha: just make a patch for the newest release then <parcha> kimrhh: Well, if he hasn't been around in a long time, then the whole package is probably unmaintained. We should at the very least note that and take his e-mail off (if he doesn't want to deal with it), no? <kimrhh> parcha: it doesn't work like that :) <kimrhh> parcha: there is not really "maintainers" in Exherbo <kimrhh> everybody fixes stuff when it is needed <parcha> I get that... (Though I'd argue that in your personal repo, even added to summer, you're the "maintainer".) I'm just wondering if it's alright to keep uninterested people under BUGS_TO <kimrhh> i don't think we care that much about BUGS_TO tbh <kimrhh> if you want to take over "maintaining" it, i see no problem in adding you to BUGS_TO instead <kimrhh> others please correct me if i'm wrong <parcha> Hey, I'm not volunteering, necessarily. ;) Goodness knows I've plenty of things I want to change/add to Exherbo but haven't the real-world time. <parcha> I feel if as a community we've started not caring about BUGS_TO, we should probably update the exheres spec to reflect it. <SuperHeron> kimrhh: is BUGS_TO really relevant for personal repos? <kimrhh> well, since spoonb has not officially left, I don't see a problem in keeping him in BUGS_TO <zlin> start by looking if there was a release when that scm package was added <zlin> pretty sure there wasn't <parcha> SuperHeron: It isn't a personal repo. <kimrhh> and definetly not when there is noone to take over <parcha> zlin: Yes, there was. <kimrhh> SuperHeron: well, the exheres could be moved <parcha> kimrhh: Yeah, BUGS_TO will remain as-is for it. <zlin> we never intended for BUGS_TO to imply ownership <parcha> zlin: OK. So what should we take it to be? <parcha> zlin: First point of contact? <zlin> someone you can talk to about it <zlin> if he's around <parcha> zlin: Right, right. OK. So then maybe we should rename it? CONTACT, maybe? <zlin> I think wulf also uses it to mark packages he checks on weekly <zlin> if you feel strongly about it mail the list <zlin> when we added it we probably expected we'd use bugzie a lot more than we do <parcha> zlin: It's more of a minor detail, but if we want to be perfectionists (about the specs anyway), we might collectively care. ;) <parcha> zlin: Ah, OK. <parcha> zlin: Actually, is there an exheres channel? <parcha> zlin: Or is the list the main venue for foundational discussions (however trivial)? <zlin> any important changes should either be discussed on the list or informed about on the list :p <zlin> sometimes we just take discussions on irc <zlin> when the answer is easy <zlin> given that spoonb said he'd return two months ago and still hasn't I wouldn't really mind removing him from BUGS_TO either <parcha> OK, so then should trivial foundational (e.g. exheres spec) discussions be OK for IRC and then notification on the list? I feel it'd be perhaps silly to swamp the list with small things. <parcha> Well, I agree with kimrhh, that having someone in the BUGS_TO would be good... But you're right that he hasn't been around for a long time... So maybe we should go ahead and remove the BUGS_TO for it? <zlin> the spec isn't really clear on what BUGS_TO means atm and I have no idea how to make it so <zlin> so if we want to solve that I don't think the answer is easy <zlin> hence the list is probably easier to discuss it on <parcha> Thankfully, I don't think Exherbo has gotten big enough to where we'd need to codify how long you would be inactive before you're removed from BUGS_TO. Y'know. The whole Gentoo bureaucracy. @_@ <parcha> zlin: Right. List it is, then. <zlin> it's not about inactive people. it's about what putting someone in BUGS_TO really means. <zlin> the name implies you should assign bugs relating to a package to whoever's in it. but we encourage people to not use bugzie unless we request it. _______________________________________________ Exherbo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.exherbo.org/mailman/listinfo/exherbo-dev
