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Date:      Wed, 18 Jul 2012 07:22:57 +0100
From:      Chris Rees <utisoft@gmail.com>
To:        John Marino <freebsdml@marino.st>
Cc:        Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com>, FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-ports@freebsd.org>, Michael Scheidell <scheidell@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: maintainer timeout for FreeBSD commiters
Message-ID:  <CADLo83-9GseEwb36-eGMAB2Znen%2BVTRB88yM2RL%2BRppBg-FA0A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <5005E2AE.3040806@marino.st>
References:  <50017C97.3050200@filez.com> <CADLo83_a=qOqTgGQF%2BLSYyGDaJoT6B2vF9JGV=a2ZHRXRyR6Pw@mail.gmail.com> <20120714192119.GA61563@vniz.net> <5001CB97.6070205@filez.com> <CAF6rxgkYjKAcLqX6ehX04ho-g7mCvcDOOb1KJC1Oxc4zvfjtHA@mail.gmail.com> <50054F6E.9040002@filez.com> <50055293.3010002@FreeBSD.org> <20120717213902.GB21825@lonesome.com> <5005E2AE.3040806@marino.st>

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On 17 Jul 2012 23:17, "John Marino" <freebsdml@marino.st> wrote:
>
> On 7/17/2012 23:39, Mark Linimon wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 07:54:59AM -0400, Michael Scheidell wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> We *are* making progress in cutting through the backlog though.
>>>>
>>>> ports have about 900 open PR. Why it does not have more port
>>>> commiters? Its difficult to recruit new person?
>>>
>>> The answer to that is very complex.
>>> And, for each PR, maybe a different answer.
>>
>>
>> This is true, but to address the previous question ...
>>
>> It is somewhat difficult to recruit new people who are willing to work
>> within guidelines (both technical and social) and who seem to want to
>> stay for the long-term.  portmgr does screen candidates to try to make
>> sure that the quality of the Ports Collection doesn't decline.  Each
>> vote is a judgement call.
>>
>> Having said that, we add new committers all the time.  OTOH we add new
>> ports all the time, and due to this the backlog seems to remain constant.
>>
>> And again, as scheidell notes, some PRs are more equal than others.
>>
>> mcl
>
>
> Hi Mark,
> I think that's a reasonable assessment about how the backlog seems about
the same and how processes just naturally work.  But I think it could work
better.
>
> Let's take my case.
> I'm a maintainer of several Ada ports and compilers.  I'm also a pkgsrc
committer, but not a FreeBSD ports committer.  I have the same packages in
both trees, but the pkgsrc packages (ports) are more current.  That's
obviously because I can commit to one tree at will but I have to submit PR
and get in line for each update at FreeBSD (A quick shout out of
appreciation to Frederic who has been tremendously gracious to me over
these months).
>
> I was thinking about this - I really like how FreeBSD ports enforces to
the best of its ability that every port have a maintainer.  My name is on
several ports and I have pride in my work.  Would it be so bad if all my
submitted patches (as a recognized quality contributor with history) just
got committed as a passthrough?  Obviously you might be reluctant to do
this on ports that 200 packages depend on, but if you created a tier of
contributors below committer but above PR submitter, I think a lot of ports
would be maintained more often and there wouldn't be so much of a backlog.
>
> The worst case scenario is a contributor turns out to be a little sloppy,
doesn't bother to use Tinderbox, etc, and after a couple of incidents you
pull his privileges.  The benefit you gain from the others would outweigh
the incidents.
>
> I've seen the response that the committer is responsible for everything
he or she commits, but if the community gave them immunity from
consequences of maintainer patches, it shouldn't be a problem.
>
> I don't expect anything to come of this suggestion, but I've always
wondered why more responsibility wasn't given to port maintainers who don't
have commit privileges.

I got around this by linking in my PRs a Tinderbox log showing a successful
build.  For some developers, this was enough to just commit.  Not sure if I
would feel the same way nowadays though ;)

Of course there are names we recognise, and these people usually end up
with a commit bit eventually anyway.

Chris



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