Hi, I'd like to bring the topic of defining default policy to do changes to packages within ::gentoo that one does not maintain.
This topic goes back from time to time on #gentoo-dev, and as I was told, it was originally sent to gentoo-dev mailing list by robbat2 (I failed to find this in archive, so if anyone have copy of it, please share). Current policy is to never touch ebuild that one did not claim as maintainer unless maintainer of said package allowed you to do so. This is a bit unhealthy, especially when some developers that maintain packages are out of reach, or the patches to update ebuild just rot on the bugzilla and are not taken in by maintainers. What I'd like to end with would be to set a policy that allows any developer with write access to ebuilds tree do changes that are small in scope, like a minor bug fixes, adding missing flags, version bumps, anything, that does not require complete overhaul of ebuild, with the option to set in metadata.xml that policy for specified package is to deny anyone but maintainers from doing changes. The packages that would require a flag to prohibit non-maintainers from doing changes would of course be those of toolchain, or other big in user base packages that are in very good shape, as in gnome packages, kde packages, X11 packages and so on. Of course, the policy would also define, that if there are any bug introduced by changes that non-maintainer made, it's responsibility of those who did the change in first place to fix it and clean any mess that it has created. I personally am fine with others doing changes to packages I own, as long as they won't break anything and I do know from the discussion on #gentoo-dev, that there are others who have similar opinion about it. Those who feel territorial and those who believe only maintainers should maintain specified packages can just set the flag in metadata.xml and continue with the current state of things for their packages. The reason why I would like to get default policy to allow-all is that I do not believe most of developers would want to go around all the packages they own and set it manually to allow others doing changes even if they're fine with others touching those packages. What do you think folks? -- Piotr.
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