Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
> "PO" == Peter Oliver writes: PO> Also, it's hard to volunteer to co-maintain a package which has a PO> non-responsive maintainer, because there is no one to grant you PO> access. Well, certainly there is but the issue is finding the proper way to ask for it. And I don't think we have any well-defined policy for that. Certainly admin privileges have been in the past to rectify this sort of situation on a one-off basis. I've done it a few times when presented with a reasonable case. Since the earliest days of pkgdb we've struggled with the best way to deal with requests for package comaintainership which went unprocessed. The problem has always been to maintain some reasonable openness while still allowing maintainers to have some control over what goes into a package. And now with the switch to pagure we've lost the means for someone to request access (though of course bugzilla works as a fallback while still preserving an audit trail). Personally I'd propose something like this as a policy: - If you are an existing packager and wish to be added as a comaintainer on a package, you should first communicate with the existing maintainers via email (pkg-maintain...@fedoraproject.org), on IRC, in person, etc. But if you receive no response, please open a bugzilla ticket against the package. Use "Requesting comaintainer access to PKG" as the ticket summary. In the ticket description, please explain why you should be added as a comaintainer. (XXX perhaps include more detail on what someone should say.) If you have not received a response in (one month/two weeks/???) you may file a ticket with (FESCo/another group) requesting that you be granted commit access to the package. They will review your request and if warranted grant the requested permissions. If your need is urgent, perhaps because you are attempting to fix security issues or significant bugs in a package, you may also wish to contact the provenpackagers (XXX link) to ask them to merge a pull request for you. - PO> For simple packages that only require a minor version PO> update, invoking and following through the non-responsive maintainer PO> process is often more effort than the outstanding work required on PO> the package. True, but that's part of why we have provenpackagers. Certainly if there's no urgent need then there's no reason to go outside of existing policy but we should still have something in between "ask provenpackagers to merge ignored PRs" and "orphan packages because of unresponsive maintainers". If someone wants to help maintain a package, we really should consider just letting them. - J< ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
On Wed, 21 Nov 2018, 17:21 Jonathan Wakely > This assumes there is a queue of ready and willing (and competent) > volunteers to take on packages that get automatically orphaned. Is > that true? I doubt it. If those people exist, why aren't they already > offering to co-maintain packages, or responding to some of those open > bugs? > A possible answer to that question could be that no-ones going to volunteer to do work that they assume someone else already has in hand. Also, it's hard to volunteer to co-maintain a package which has a non-responsive maintainer, because there is no one to grant you access. For simple packages that only require a minor version update, invoking and following through the non-responsive maintainer process is often more effort than the outstanding work required on the package. > -- Peter Oliver ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
On 18/11/18 09:44 +, Mattia Verga wrote: Il 11/17/18 10:59 PM, Philip Kovacs ha scritto: You want to attract packagers, not irritate them. In my opinion, "irritating" is when a maintainer doesn't reply to bugs that users fill in Bugzilla. If they can't found enough time to reply or change state of any bug in a six months period, than maybe it is better someone else take care of their package. This assumes there is a queue of ready and willing (and competent) volunteers to take on packages that get automatically orphaned. Is that true? I doubt it. If those people exist, why aren't they already offering to co-maintain packages, or responding to some of those open bugs? I don't think those people exist. Not in significant numbers anyway. Automatically taking away packages from inactive maintainers is probably just going to mean even more work for a small handful of people who already do tons of work for the distro anyway. They'll have to take on all those orphaned packages, to ensure the distro keeps working. I don't want to overload those people. Being a volunteer doesn't mean to not have any responsibility. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
> Being a volunteer doesn't mean to not have any responsibility. It's grossly unfair to insinuate that being a volunteer is associated with laziness or a lack of responsibility. There are a myriad of things that we as packagers do that are completely silent to the surrounding automation and for which most people are never even aware. Working with upstream development teams, for example, filing bugs on their systems. What Fedora sees as a patch or a version bump to a package may be the result of hours of thankless work on the part of the volunteer packager. If you want to find a way to automate notification that a maintainer is unresponsive after a reasonably period, fine. Obsoleting their packages is just wrong however. On Sunday, November 18, 2018, 4:45:00 AM EST, Mattia Verga wrote: Il 11/17/18 10:59 PM, Philip Kovacs ha scritto: You want to attract packagers, not irritate them. In my opinion, "irritating" is when a maintainer doesn't reply to bugs that users fill in Bugzilla. If they can't found enough time to reply or change state of any bug in a six months period, than maybe it is better someone else take care of their package. Being a volunteer doesn't mean to not have any responsibility. ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
On 11/18/18 1:44 AM, Mattia Verga wrote: > Il 11/17/18 10:59 PM, Philip Kovacs ha scritto: > >> You want to attract packagers, not irritate them. > > In my opinion, "irritating" is when a maintainer doesn't reply to bugs that > users fill in Bugzilla. If they can't found enough time to reply or change > state of any bug in a six months period, than maybe it is better someone else > take care of their package. > > Being a volunteer doesn't mean to not have any responsibility. So, this has come up... at least 3 times. I can't seem to find the first one, but at least one of the old discussions: https://lwn.net/Articles/261833/ it was always decided that it would be too annoying to maintainers, but that was before we had fedmsg and more information on activity, so perhaps it's worth looking into again. One of the problems is that we want bugs fixed, but all bugs are not created equal. We don't want to force maintainers to say they are active in every bug they get, but currently we allow non responsive process for that, so a activity ping might well be an improvement over that. We also want to know when people are inactive so we can get someone else to maintain their packages, but any packages with co-maintainers should already be taking that on, so perhaps we should worry more about packages that only have one maintainer? kevin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 11:47 AM Mattia Verga wrote: > > > - after three emails without response, orphan their packages and inform > devel list > I'm not sure I'm in favor of automatically orphaning packages. I think it could "tell" of them to the devel list that way anyone who knows them can try to get in touch with them before that happens. Thanks, Richard ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
Il 11/17/18 10:59 PM, Philip Kovacs ha scritto: > You want to attract packagers, not irritate them. In my opinion, "irritating" is when a maintainer doesn't reply to bugs that users fill in Bugzilla. If they can't found enough time to reply or change state of any bug in a six months period, than maybe it is better someone else take care of their package. Being a volunteer doesn't mean to not have any responsibility.___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
There already is a fedora_active_user script of sorts https://github.com/pypingou/fedora-active-user. I would not be in favor of any respond or die automation. We volunteer our time and effort to be packagersand the job is often thankless enough as it is. Having some additional automation orphan your packagesbecause you happen to be away for a bit is overkill. You want to attract packagers, not irritate them. On Saturday, November 17, 2018, 11:58:27 AM EST, Mattia Verga wrote: Il 11/17/18 4:50 PM, Ron Olson ha scritto: > What about packages that see infrequent updates; I maintain Nethack > and the Dev Team can and does take years between releases. If it's > just a blanket email to ask the packagers if they're still interested > that's one thing, but going off package updates may be problematic for > some folks. > > I'm thinking about a script which would run every month and: - checks maintainer activities in git / bugzilla / mailing lists (something like fedora-active-user already does) in the last six months - if the user hasn't done any activity, send an email with a link - if the user visit the link, do not bother them for the next 6 months - if the user doesn't visit the link, send a second email after one week and a third after another week - after three emails without response, orphan their packages and inform devel list ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
> Maybe a tool that checks a packager activity in the last 6 months and if > What do you think? Better make it a year as people are entitled to a break! ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
Il 11/17/18 4:50 PM, Ron Olson ha scritto: > What about packages that see infrequent updates; I maintain Nethack > and the Dev Team can and does take years between releases. If it's > just a blanket email to ask the packagers if they're still interested > that's one thing, but going off package updates may be problematic for > some folks. > > I'm thinking about a script which would run every month and: - checks maintainer activities in git / bugzilla / mailing lists (something like fedora-active-user already does) in the last six months - if the user hasn't done any activity, send an email with a link - if the user visit the link, do not bother them for the next 6 months - if the user doesn't visit the link, send a second email after one week and a third after another week - after three emails without response, orphan their packages and inform devel list ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
What about packages that see infrequent updates; I maintain Nethack and the Dev Team can and does take years between releases. If it's just a blanket email to ask the packagers if they're still interested that's one thing, but going off package updates may be problematic for some folks. > On Nov 17, 2018, at 6:36 AM, Manas Mangaonkar > wrote: > > Yes, this could be a good idea. Might be too small as a gsoc project though. > > I'd happily take this as i am anyways going to try for gsoc 19 with > fedora,this could be a good starting point. > > A simple dockerized/contenerized python based app could be done as a very > simple implementation. > > > > On Nov 17, 2018 4:35 PM, "Mattia Verga" wrote: > Too often there are "non responsive maintainer" messages here. > > Sometimes this is because a maintainer has lost their interest in Fedora > and left their responsibilities without communication, which means their > packages can be left unmaintained for long time in repositories before > someone notice that. > > At other times the maintainer is still active, but for some reason they > are unreachable to users (email change, etc.). > > I would propose some sort of automatic check of maintainer responsivity. > Maybe a tool that checks a packager activity in the last 6 months and if > there is no activity then sends an email asking the maintainer to > confirm they're still involved in Fedora. In case there's no reply, > either automatically orphan their packages or notify someone > (devel-list) to try to reach them. > > What do you think? > > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > > ___ > devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org > To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org > Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
Yes, this could be a good idea. Might be too small as a gsoc project though. I'd happily take this as i am anyways going to try for gsoc 19 with fedora,this could be a good starting point. A simple dockerized/contenerized python based app could be done as a very simple implementation. On Nov 17, 2018 4:35 PM, "Mattia Verga" wrote: Too often there are "non responsive maintainer" messages here. Sometimes this is because a maintainer has lost their interest in Fedora and left their responsibilities without communication, which means their packages can be left unmaintained for long time in repositories before someone notice that. At other times the maintainer is still active, but for some reason they are unreachable to users (email change, etc.). I would propose some sort of automatic check of maintainer responsivity. Maybe a tool that checks a packager activity in the last 6 months and if there is no activity then sends an email asking the maintainer to confirm they're still involved in Fedora. In case there's no reply, either automatically orphan their packages or notify someone (devel-list) to try to reach them. What do you think? ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Re: Automating package maintainers responsivity check
On 11/17/18 11:14 AM, Mattia Verga wrote: > I would propose some sort of automatic check of maintainer responsivity. > Maybe a tool that checks a packager activity in the last 6 months and if > there is no activity then sends an email asking the maintainer to > confirm they're still involved in Fedora. In case there's no reply, > either automatically orphan their packages or notify someone > (devel-list) to try to reach them. > > What do you think? > So basically a heartbeat for developers? Maybe make it even more automatic. When people are not active, they get an email about the branching. when they don't react their package is not branched to the new release. This will cause broken builds, yes. But that's actually the point since people will ask the maintainer to branch it **now**. When people don't react it's time to get a new maintainer. And the people who are maybe interested in being this new maintainer: The people who need the package. Maybe I'm a bit to easy with taking packages away from unresponsive maintainers, but I think this would be a quite easy way to take care of those things. -- Signed Sheogorath signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Automating package maintainers responsivity check
Too often there are "non responsive maintainer" messages here. Sometimes this is because a maintainer has lost their interest in Fedora and left their responsibilities without communication, which means their packages can be left unmaintained for long time in repositories before someone notice that. At other times the maintainer is still active, but for some reason they are unreachable to users (email change, etc.). I would propose some sort of automatic check of maintainer responsivity. Maybe a tool that checks a packager activity in the last 6 months and if there is no activity then sends an email asking the maintainer to confirm they're still involved in Fedora. In case there's no reply, either automatically orphan their packages or notify someone (devel-list) to try to reach them. What do you think? ___ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
