Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 21:56:26 -0600 From: Jon Noack <noackjr@alumni.rice.edu> To: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> Cc: tmseck@netcologne.de Subject: Re: port maintainer duties Message-ID: <3FDFD3EA.4050400@alumni.rice.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0312161751270.31519-100000@pancho> References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0312161751270.31519-100000@pancho>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 12/16/2003 6:52 PM, Mark Linimon wrote: >>There has been no response. I understand that we all get busy and >>can't handle things immediately -- I'm not trying to be demanding. > > > (I'm just thinking out loud here, I don't have any hard-and-fixed > answers for you). > > I don't know if it's possible on a volunteer project to achieve any > working consensus on how much time is "too long". I think you could > even argue that picking an arbitrary time period might be too much > of a "one size fits all" solution (e.g. it might not matter to as > many people if games/blackjack gets stale :-) ) > > As far as I can tell, the only "fixed" limit is the stated ability > of core to rescind commit bits that haven't been used for a year. > While this is probably a good policy for commit bits, in terms of > ports maintainership, given how quickly applications change out in > the wider community, a year is an eternity. > > On the other hand, from my own research, we have the following > situations for our maintained ports: > > a) over 100 ports PRs that are at least a year old; > b) over 100 ports that are marked broken on -current (as evaluated > on i386), some of which have been failing on bento for quite > some time. (Nearly 50 of those are also marked broken on -stable). > > This is clearly undesirable, but I would rather not see some kind > of fixed policy enacted to fix it -- common sense ought to suffice. > > Perhaps ports maintainers should consider these suggestions for > when it's time to release their maintainership(s): > > a) when PRs for a port are piling up faster than you can > keep up with them; > b) when you're no longer actively using the port any more; > c) when it's been more than a month or two since you've been > able to look at outstading PR or build issues; > d) when you feel like you're obligated to do it because otherwise > it might not be maintained; > e) when you're having your commit bit "stored for safekeeping" > when taking a leave of absence from FreeBSD; > f) when it's just no damned fun anymore :-) > > Now, there's no question that we need more port maintainers to > help share the maintainence burden, but if we consider the PR > submitters to be a "pool of talent waiting to be used", rather > than just seeing the individual PRs as problems to be solved, > perhaps we can get those problems to cancel each other out ... > > A final observation: even if we were to try to achieve some kind > of consensus in this thread, so many people are away from FreeBSD > during the holidays that are observed in the U.S. (among many other > places), there are just too many people who would't see the discussion. > > mcl Thanks for the well-reasoned response. I knew some of this -- I was just asking to ensure I wasn't missing some obvious step that could make it all better. Jon Noack -- Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi. - Larry Wall
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3FDFD3EA.4050400>