Ask the Council! History thread - Page 74 - maemo.org

ivgalvez | # 731 | 2012-02-08, 18:53 | Report

Originally Posted by timoph View Post

At least I don't trust most of the votes. The more popular packages seem to get ok votes right after putting it to testing so that tells me that either people don't really test it or don't test it enough.

Remember that the extras promotions affect people with no interest in -testing or -devel. Believe it or not but there are n900 users who don't even know about those repos (I live with one). While I understand that one can't be too anal with community QA but there has to be some sort of quarantee that the package is properly tested. Automated promotions will only lower the quality of extras and will not solve the problem of too few testers.

No, the question here is that there are packages (a lot) that could be promoted right now if their maintainers wouldn't have disappeared. So automated promotion (when votes, quarantine, etc. is correct) would only avoid orphaned packages to stagnate in testing forever.

Nothing grants you now that unproperly tested packages get promotion to Extras if they have an active maintainer.

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misterc | # 732 | 2012-02-08, 19:15 | Report

Originally Posted by ivgalvez View Post

[...]So automated promotion (when votes, quarantine, etc. is correct) would only avoid orphaned packages to stagnate in testing forever.

should orphaned packages be promoted to extra @ all? as timoph pointed out, the extras / maemo wihich is listed by default in HAM's catalogs should maybe not contain products which are not maintained any more?

Originally Posted by ivgalvez View Post

Nothing grants you now that unproperly tested packages get promotion to Extras if they have an active maintainer.

good point!

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jacktanner | # 733 | 2012-02-08, 19:16 | Report

Well, it's not right to automatically promote a package if it has no active maintainer.

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timoph | # 734 | 2012-02-08, 22:34 | Report

Do we have list of packages in extras missing a maintainer? I'd guess we still have people with skill and will to maintain those?

So I'd propose starting a wiki page for packages looking for maintainer. Also it's important to try to contact the original maintainer and give reasonable time to response if (s)he is still doing something with the package.

IMO packages in extras with critical bugs and no maintainer should be removed from there.

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misterc | # 735 | 2012-02-09, 00:18 | Report

Originally Posted by timoph View Post

Do we have list of packages in extras missing a maintainer? I'd guess we still have people with skill and will to maintain those?

So I'd propose starting a wiki page for packages looking for maintainer. Also it's important to try to contact the original maintainer and give reasonable time to response if (s)he is still doing something with the package.

any way to determine whether a developer is still working on his package ?!?
number of days (weeks?) since last update?
TMO PM and wait?

Originally Posted by timoph View Post

IMO packages in extras with critical bugs and no maintainer should be removed from there.

copy that!
but see above

additional point to consider: there is another version available in testing and/or dev...

==> without release management, this is going to be a nightmare, @ best

ivgalvez | # 736 | 2012-02-09, 09:51 | Report

Originally Posted by misterc View Post

should orphaned packages be promoted to extra @ all? as timoph pointed out, the extras / maemo wihich is listed by default in HAM's catalogs should maybe not contain products which are not maintained any more?

good point!

I don't see that point, then a lot of stuff will be removed!

Unmaintaned packages won't receive updates but that doesn't mean they don't work as expected. For that case, we need supertesters to be able to retire problematic/broken packages from Extras

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timoph | # 737 | 2012-02-09, 13:19 | Report

Originally Posted by misterc View Post

any way to determine whether a developer is still working on his package ?!?
number of days (weeks?) since last update?
TMO PM and wait?

The packages should have contact email in them. And what comes to tmo private messages.. at least I don't read them so I'd just use email. Also not everyone uses tmo (at least the community used to be a lot more than a simple discussion forum)

Also there's a system to request package maintainment for yourself already in place. At least I got an email a while ago where someone requested rights to maintain a package I was doing earlier. IIRC the mail had a link to form inside maemo.org to grant the rights. So what I'm saying the infra for doing the changes is already in place but evidently not used.

The problem with this is that what happens when the original maintainer doesn't respond to the request or queries. I'd give at least 2-3 weeks to respond before taking any action. Btw, who can manually move the rights if all contact attempts fail?

Originally Posted by ivgalvez View Post

Unmaintaned packages won't receive updates but that doesn't mean they don't work as expected. For that case, we need supertesters to be able to retire problematic/broken packages from Extras

yep. My point was to get rid of unmaintained packages with critical bugs.

Also: When I'm talking about maintaining I don't mean that someone steps up and starts implementing features x, y or z. They can do that but then it's also development not just maintaining the package.

Last edited by timoph; 2012-02-09 at 13:23.

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pali | # 738 | 2012-02-13, 07:34 | Report

@SD69:
Look at thread about Wolfram Alpha: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=73804

Can you ask W|A team for exception on Maemo application?

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SD69 | # 739 | 2012-02-16, 12:13 | Report

Originally Posted by pali View Post

@SD69:
Look at thread about Wolfram Alpha: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=73804

Can you ask W|A team for exception on Maemo application?

Council already asked and was denied.

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rcolistete | # 740 | 2012-02-22, 18:22 | Report

Could you help me ? I would like to be the maintainer of IPython :
http://maemo.org/packages/view/ipython/
for Maemo 4 and 5, so I could promote the packages to extras-testing, etc. See more details of IPython in the IPython for Maemo 4 & 5 & 6 topic.

I have release today a new version of IPython (with separated documentation in 'ipython-doc') for Maemo 4 & 5. I also released some months ago IPython 0.10.2 for MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan.

My signature shows that I am an active Maemo 4 & 5 & 6 developer, with Python softwares for mathematical & scientific use. I have current and future projects which depend on IPython (SymPy, etc).

Today I have contacted the current maintainer, Bruno Araujo. But in November I have contacted him without any answer about IPython updates, etc. So I am not sure I will be answered any time soon.

Last edited by rcolistete; 2012-02-22 at 18:32.

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