Re: skills of developers

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 16:38:20 +0200, Torsten Landschoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
said: 

> Hi *, What kind of discussion is this?

This is a discussion about project quality.

> We can't effort more bureaucrazy (typo intended) in the project. Let
> the people doing the work do the work instead of first measuring
> their ability.

This is quite possibly the silliest thing I have ever heard.
 Please, people, before taking on a task that users depend on  you to
 perform well,  _do_ assess whether you are up to the task.  There is
 no shame in acknowledging that you do not have to skills to maintain
 something (you'll not find a python package in my stable, nor
 haskel, not a slew of other languages I have no skill with).

If you do not have the skillset to perform a task, or the
 time, ***DO NOT VOLUNTEER TO TAKE IT ON***.  By doing so, someone
 better able to perform that task would not do so

Find something else to maintain. There are 10,000 or so source
 packages out there, I am sure you can find something you feel capable
 of doing.  Doing a bad job (and, as a maintainer, you can't do
 anything _but_ a bad job if you can't help debuag/develop a package)
 is not really better than doing something else.


> And critical packages are assigned anyway so why bother that much?

It is not just critical packages that deserve quality of
 implementation.  We have problems enough with ill maintained packages
 to start encouraging people to do so.

manoj
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Re: skills of developers

[Torsten Landschoff]

Hi *,

What kind of discussion is this? We can't effort more bureaucrazy (typo
intended) in the project. Let the people doing the work do the work
instead of first measuring their ability. If you are not able to
maintain a package basically you wont. Or you wont for long as somebody
will take over. And critical packages are assigned anyway so why bother
that much?

Apart from that I'd say that everybody doing relevant work for the
project should be able to get the developer status. It's not about being
able to write C, C++ or something. It's about being important to the
project in any way.

Imagine Christian Perrier would just do translations - don't you think
he would be an important part of the project anyway?

Greetings

Torsten



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Re: skills of developers

[Benjamin Mesing]

Hello,

> > You claim that if someone spends just as much time translating Debian as
> > someone else does on packaging software, the first one shouldn't become a
> > DD and the second one does? I disagree firmly.
> 
> Packaging is the essential work and everyone involved into Debian must
> be able to do the basic things. You don't go to military just to sit
> around and do office work - everyone has to go trough basic training.
I disagree. Maintaining the webpages, doing translations and stuff like
this is of equal importance to the project. If you hire a Web Designer
for your software producing company, you don't require him to have
programming abilities?
Thats what division of labour is all about.


> > (and can demonstrate this in a variety of ways, including a debian.org
> > email address). And that you can influence its direction when there's a
> 
> Aha, that's what it is all about. Demonstrate the "beeing a VIP".
No, not VIP. Its about feeling to be a part of the project, its about
being able to "influence its direction when there's a vote up". Would
you ever feel a real citizen of a state if you were not allowed to vote?


> The outcome of the votes mostly affects... whom? Right, the packagers,
> or at least people that know what it is all about. For the same reasons
> Debian policy is not written by lawyers or philosophers.
The outcome affects the project. I think translators, webpage
maintainers and others are part of the project.

Greetings
Ben (who is no Debian Developer himself and hates to do documenting and
translating)


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Re: skills of developers

[Peter Samuelson]

[Bartosz Fenski]
> That's example:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2005/07/msg00254.html

Wow, that's a disturbing thread!

So, some people honestly don't see a problem with someone taking sole
responsibility for a package with no ability to hack on its source?  At
the very least I'd expect it to be common sense of the most basic sort
that you need at least one comaintainer qualified to extract, read and
write patches.

> In sum. Maybe it's time to create additional positions in Debian
> project?  Maybe something like Packager (with knowledge about Bash
> and Debian Policy), Translator (with knowledge about some particular
> language and English), Helper (with knowledge about Debian in
> general), and finally DEVELOPER which develops software and is able
> to fix it if it's broken.

Your categories don't really make sense to me.  In what situation would
a Packager who is not a Developer be useful?  Since you'd obviously
need a Developer on your maintainer team anyway, would a mere Packager
on the same team really be able to contribute meaningfully?  (I guess
you can take the above as meaning that I'm in favor of requiring
"Developers" to know Debian Policy and how to build packages.  This
stuff isn't rocket science - it's really not much to ask, for people
who already hack on free software.)

The Helper position seems even more useless to me - I don't understand
what a Helper could contribute.  Did you intend this one to encompass
debian-legal and debian-www?

> Developers could be splitted to Python/Perl/C/C++/Java/Mono/and so
> on...

The overhead of handing out these 'certifications' would far outweigh
any advantages I can think of in having them.


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Re: skills of developers

[Eduard Bloch]

#include 
* Thijs Kinkhorst [Fri, Jul 15 2005, 12:27:55PM]:
> On Fri, July 15, 2005 02:36, Laszlo Boszormenyi wrote:
> >  Debian _Developer_. You can translate documents, submit then against
> > the package as patch for example. You can even join to the translation
> > teams.
> 
> You claim that if someone spends just as much time translating Debian as
> someone else does on packaging software, the first one shouldn't become a
> DD and the second one does? I disagree firmly.

Packaging is the essential work and everyone involved into Debian must
be able to do the basic things. You don't go to military just to sit
around and do office work - everyone has to go trough basic training.

> Being an official DD is more than just technical: access to the archive
> and machines. It means that you're officially affiliated with the project

You get the access because you need it - to do your work as packager. Do
you really want to tell us that you absoletely need to have access to an
ia64 box to reproduce a weird upstream bug in ... an SGML text?

> (and can demonstrate this in a variety of ways, including a debian.org
> email address). And that you can influence its direction when there's a

Aha, that's what it is all about. Demonstrate the "beeing a VIP".

> vote up. I don't see why packagers should and translators shouldn't be
> allowed to vote if they invest the same amount of time.

The outcome of the votes mostly affects... whom? Right, the packagers,
or at least people that know what it is all about. For the same reasons
Debian policy is not written by lawyers or philosophers.

> Your "you can submit patches as a translator" goes just as well for
> packagers; anyone can get a package in through a sponsor.

If the software is worthy beeing packaged and the packaging quality is
good (or can be improved in co-work with the maintainer), there should
be no big problem finding a sponsor.

Regards,
Eduard.

-- 
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 mrvn: Pascal? Für das Verständnis von Wirths Büchern
 Dafür gibts doch Oberon
 mrvn: Kommt drauf an von wann die Bücher sind


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Re: skills of developers

[Thijs Kinkhorst]

On Fri, July 15, 2005 02:36, Laszlo Boszormenyi wrote:
>  Debian _Developer_. You can translate documents, submit then against
> the package as patch for example. You can even join to the translation
> teams.

You claim that if someone spends just as much time translating Debian as
someone else does on packaging software, the first one shouldn't become a
DD and the second one does? I disagree firmly.

Being an official DD is more than just technical: access to the archive
and machines. It means that you're officially affiliated with the project
(and can demonstrate this in a variety of ways, including a debian.org
email address). And that you can influence its direction when there's a
vote up. I don't see why packagers should and translators shouldn't be
allowed to vote if they invest the same amount of time.

Your "you can submit patches as a translator" goes just as well for
packagers; anyone can get a package in through a sponsor.

I do disagree with the original poster though: there's already enough
structure in Debian. To prevent problems like with the quoted "zoo"
maintainer who doesn't know C, you should be more careful who maintains
which package. But this is common sense, and should not need to be solved
by creating more different positions.


Regards
Thijs




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Re: skills of developers

[Laszlo Boszormenyi]

Hi Bartosz,

On Fri, 2005-07-15 at 01:52 +0200, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo wrote:
> What are the required skills of the
> developers/developers-to-be?
 Skip, as we both passed the NM process.

> should everyone be able to maintain every package on the world?
 No, packaging is not just put the right files to the correct place
thing. You/we often should make changes to the source to make it
compile, further develop upstream (like the kernel-source or what
Siggy and a bit me was doing with MailMan, etc). Changes sometimes
also required to make the depends optional and/or chooseable.
(Bug-)Reporters may submit patches, that you should read and approve
or reject, etc. Last but not least you should know how to configure
a package, how to make transitions from one version to an other if
it needs configuration/data upgrade.
Packaging is not just packaging, see that some packages have a team
to do it right, because one person just can't do it.

> To be honest I intended to join Debian project mainly to work on
> documentation/translation efforts.
 Yes, I have asked you back then that you are going to be a Debian
_Developer_ when the only thing you want to do is documentation and
translation.

>  I was HIGHLY SURPRISED that my
> application manager (greetings to him) asked me how to create Debian
> package. For Christ's sake who the f*** I am to know about it if I'm going
> only to translate some stupid documents huh?
 Debian _Developer_. You can translate documents, submit then against
the package as patch for example. You can even join to the translation
teams.
Have you seen http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/ for example? I think
yes, as you are involved according to
http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/po-debconf/pl
There are mailing lists even:
http://lists.debian.org/i18n.html
Also, general documentation needs translators as well:
http://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals
There are some Polish done, but others may accept help as well.

> I'll be never good programmer and I'm aware of it. Knowing C and knowing
> C can be two different things.
 Yup, and knowing C and Ada can be an other kind of different things.

> In sum. Maybe it's time to create additional positions in Debian project?
 There are already differences, maybe not like you 'proposed', but for
example _no-one_ should be a DD to make translations. So I think the
very first thing a translator should do is to join his/her tranlation
team and/or maillist and offer help. DD as the name suggests is a
'Developer'.

> I suppose we're going to have flamewar here as usual, so please... oh
> nevermind :P
 It was my first and only shot. I do not know how I got your mail even,
as I am not on debian-devel@ anymore. Thus I don't think I will get
the replies even, will read archives.

Regards,
Laszlo/GCS


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Re: skills of developers

[Michael K. Edwards]

On 7/14/05, Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In sum. Maybe it's time to create additional positions in Debian project?
> Maybe something like Packager (with knowledge about Bash and Debian
> Policy), Translator (with knowledge about some particular language and
> English), Helper (with knowledge about Debian in general), and finally
> DEVELOPER which develops software and is able to fix it if it's broken.
> Developers could be splitted to Python/Perl/C/C++/Java/Mono/and so on...

AIUI, DD-hood principally conveys voting rights, upload and login
privileges to certain machines, and r/w access to debian-private and w
access to d-d-a.  None of this has much to do with real-world
"software developer" competence and it would be rather odd to try to
retrofit such an expectation onto the "Developer" status at this
point.  It's not as if bogus position titles weren't ubiquitous in the
software industry anyway -- I have knuckled under to accepting titles
like "Staff Engineer" despite the fact that I am no engineer and do
not pretend to be even in job interviews, let alone any other setting.

But FWIW I would be disinclined to see Developer status split along
programming language lines in any way that isn't purely advisory.  In
a crisis I'd rather have a wizard developer who has never seen Python
(Scheme, OCaml, whatever) before step in, figure out an RC bug, and
deal with it without having to jump some stupid "hello world" hoops
first.  After you've worked in a dozen disparate languages, the
thirteenth is just more grist for the mill.  And for that matter, with
a little help from Google, fixing a screwed-up translation file in
some human language you don't know isn't all that hard either.  It
won't be idiomatic, but they'll get the idea.

Cheers,
- Michael

skills of developers

[Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo]

Hello.

I would like to move one subject. What are the required skills of the
developers/developers-to-be?

Debian Policy, Developers' Reference, New Maintainers' Guide and most 
documentation describe only _how to make a good package_. 

Good package in that case means it will comply with Debian Policy.
That's great, but that doesn't ensure us that maintainer know anything
besides mentioned documents. That's not big deal to create Debian package.

That's example:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2005/07/msg00254.html
Nothing against poster of this document... that's only example which is the
most up-to-date one.

Please read whole thread to get know about rationale.

Don't lie ourselves. Everyone who know where to put binary and architecture
independent data and  a little of bashism can became Debian developer.
In general there's nothing wrong with that, but... yes there's BIG BUT here, 
should everyone be able to maintain every package on the world?

Or should we split duties and call persons repectively to their knowlegde?

To be honest I intended to join Debian project mainly to work on
documentation/translation efforts. I was HIGHLY SURPRISED that my
application manager (greetings to him) asked me how to create Debian
package. For Christ's sake who the f*** I am to know about it if I'm going
only to translate some stupid documents huh?

Yep, I learned that and I passed "the exam". Sure I know
C/Python/Perl/ but I hate that. Yes not everone in the Unix/Linux 
world loves to hack.

I'll be never good programmer and I'm aware of it. Knowing C and knowing
C can be two different things. 

In sum. Maybe it's time to create additional positions in Debian project?
Maybe something like Packager (with knowledge about Bash and Debian
Policy), Translator (with knowledge about some particular language and
English), Helper (with knowledge about Debian in general), and finally
DEVELOPER which develops software and is able to fix it if it's broken.
Developers could be splitted to Python/Perl/C/C++/Java/Mono/and so on...

I suppose we're going to have flamewar here as usual, so please... oh
nevermind :P

regards
fEnIo

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