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Am Mon, Dec 02, 2024 at 06:15:22PM -0700 schrieb Soren Stoutner:and
I think one of the best things we could do to attract new contributors,
Debianto encourage those who are currently Sponsored Maintainers to become
Maintainers, and those who are current Debian Maintainers to become Debian Developers would be to create an official DPL Mentors Delegation. This would build on the excellent work Phil Wyett is currently doing as the unofficial Mentors Triage.
Speaking both with and without my DPL hat, I don't think a delegation is necessary. Instead, I would prefer to establish a way to direct sponsees
to the appropriate team for their package. From my experience, the teams
I work with are quite effective at sponsoring packages that fit their
scope and are maintained within the team's Git repository. I believe
that ensuring a package fits properly into a team is a key prerequisite
for a good sponsor-sponsee relationship.
When I was regularly monitoring ITPs, I noticed that newcomers often
struggle to "find friends" (i.e., sponsors). In my opinion, what we need
is someone to guide sponsees to the appropriate team, Salsa group, or
similar space. This role doesn't require a delegation since it doesn't involve authority, but rather a deep understanding of Debian's structure
and workflows.
I think one of the best things we could do to attract new contributors, and to
encourage those who are currently Sponsored Maintainers to become Debian Maintainers, and those who are current Debian Maintainers to become Debian Developers would be to create an official DPL Mentors Delegation. This would build on the excellent work Phil Wyett is currently doing as the unofficial Mentors Triage.
Too many contributors prepare a Debian package, submit it to Mentors, and then
never have it reviewed and sponsored by a Debian Developer. This can be highly demotivating for the contributor.
I think that having a team of Debian
Developers dedicated to reviewing every package submitted to Mentors would do more to encourage more contributions to Debian, and more people becoming Debian Maintainers and Debian Developers, than anything else I could name.
I have directed several RFS (Request For Sponsor) towards appropriate teams, when then exist. However, my personal experience is that the majority of RFS
that come into Debian Mentors do not fit neatly into any existing team.
On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 10:39:52AM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
I have directed several RFS (Request For Sponsor) towards appropriate teams,
when then exist. However, my personal experience is that the majority of RFS
that come into Debian Mentors do not fit neatly into any existing team.
Yeah. We have a lot of leaf applications and so on that can't have a team.
Hi,
On Wed, Dec 4, 2024 at 8:30 PM Xiyue Deng <manphiz@gmail.com> wrote:
P.S. I would also like to take this chance to appreciate Phil Wyett's automatic RFS checking that adds "confirmed" tag to RFS bugs that passed the checks, which helps ensure a minimum quality of a prepared package ready for sponsorship that can reduce the review rounds and potentially save some time for potential sponsors.
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=sponsorship-requests&submitter=manphiz%40gmail.com
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianEmacsenTeam
--
Regards,
Xiyue Deng
Look, he really deserves to become a Debian Developer, from what I see
he has been contributing to Debian for a while and now he is doing
this work and he has got 3 advocates. It would be very fair and I
agree with you.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2024/12/msg00006.html
Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> writes:
Am Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 10:46:03PM +0500 schrieb Andrey Rakhmatullin:
On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 10:39:52AM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
I have directed several RFS (Request For Sponsor) towards appropriate teams,
when then exist. However, my personal experience is that the majority of RFS
that come into Debian Mentors do not fit neatly into any existing team.
Yeah. We have a lot of leaf applications and so on that can't have a team.
To be precise, we have both: packages that may not fit neatly into any team, and many packages that align perfectly with existing teams, such
as the scientific team, games team, multimedia team, phototools team,
and others. I've moved many packages to these teams. Additionally, the software in question is written in a specific programming language,
making it easier to find maintainers fluent in that language within the dedicated language team. These maintainers can help with issues, or,
even better, the newcomer may contribute to resolving problems within
the language-specific team. I don't want to suggest that current team members are eager for more work, but the potential for new, active team members might be compelling enough to take on the responsibility of sponsoring.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
https://fam-tille.de
Having a team to maintain a group of related packages is supposed to
improve velocity and usually works well. However there is a chance that
a team may be understuffed, both temporarily and gradually. I have
recently become a DM, so technically if my RFS bugs have been sponsored
I can work autonomously on those packages. Unfortunately my RFS bug
list is still growing[1] as my team becomes relatively less active
recently. I totally understand as this is voluntary work and people
have their lives to attend to (I do), and I am grateful for all comments
and sponsoring from my team. On the other hand, seeing my packages
being removed from mentors.d.n because of no sponsorship after 20 weeks
is also discouraging.
It would be great to have a group of DDs that are willing to regularly
check for RFS bugs / mentors.d.n and offer sponsorship, even for team maintained packages. Some teams also maintain a team policy either on wiki[2] or in a document in team repo, which can be a good guideline for outside sponsors.
Just my 2 cents.
P.S. I would also like to take this chance to appreciate Phil Wyett's automatic RFS checking that adds "confirmed" tag to RFS bugs that passed
the checks, which helps ensure a minimum quality of a prepared package
ready for sponsorship that can reduce the review rounds and potentially
save some time for potential sponsors.
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=sponsorship-requests&submitter=manphiz%40gmail.com
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianEmacsenTeam
It would be great to have a group of DDs that are willing to regularly
check for RFS bugs / mentors.d.n and offer sponsorship
"Andrey" == Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> writes:
>> It would be great to have a group of DDs that are willing to
>> regularly check for RFS bugs / mentors.d.n and offer sponsorship
Andrey> Sure. This is true since the beginning of the RFS process,
Andrey> and as nothing stops people from doing this, but based on my
Andrey> observations such a group was never larger than 1-3 people,
Andrey> just knowing that this is a good idea is not enough.
Perhaps sharing reasons why people don't do this would help us
understand what a change might look like.
On Mon, Dec 09, 2024 at 02:02:30PM -0700, Sam Hartman wrote:
>> It would be great to have a group of DDs that are willing to
>> regularly check for RFS bugs / mentors.d.n and offer sponsorship
Andrey> Sure. This is true since the beginning of the RFS process,
Andrey> and as nothing stops people from doing this, but based on my
Andrey> observations such a group was never larger than 1-3 people,
Andrey> just knowing that this is a good idea is not enough.
Perhaps sharing reasons why people don't do this would help us
understand what a change might look like.
Most of mine you already summarized below: even a package with perfect debian/ requires quite a lot of effort and more mental work than e.g. updating your own package so that you know what are you uploading; and uploading once means the maintainer will likely ask you for other uploads
in the future and while that's totally correct from all points of view
it's additional potential burden (especially as I failed to review private sponsorship requests in a reasonable time multiple times in the past).