Hello everyone,
I've stumbled upon this article describing all the issues that make the
process of bugfixes and package releases cumbersome in Debian.
https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2019-03-10-debian-winding-down/
I've always been interested in contributing to Debian, but just learning
the process of maintaining a package seem to be complex enough that I
would postpone so I would have more time to look at this -- which I
never really had.
I've looked at this uncritically as just a matter of remembering and
following the process, but the article above seems to describe all the
issues that are in fact make the process cumbersome and difficult for
the beginners.
A few sticking points for me personally were configuring reportbug tool
-- as the only way to submit bug reports is via email, so in addition to
trying to describe the problem, I also need to configure mailing system,
and I'm a technical person who knows this (and I have configured own
mail server), so I'd imagine someone whose found some issue and for
example is using gmail web interface would be completely lost.
I like debian bug tracking system for looking up bugs, but submitting a
bug seemed like a huge pain.
Debian recently switched to Gitlab as their repository manager, but the
article points out that all bug tracking management is still would be
done using old and cumbersome tool.
I'm writing this email not to start a flamewar about Debian, as I've
been using it for more than 10 years and I'm pretty happy about the
distribution, but I now I believe that the best way to become Debian
contributor is to go to a Bug Squashing Party where someone could
navigate a novice through a particular set of tools used for the release
of a particular package.
Alex.
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