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> I tried getting the Debian Ruby team, who had similar complaints before, to join me on a mailing list so that we could discuss a common interface between Gems
by msl09 9y ago
> I tried getting the Debian Ruby team, who had similar complaints before, to join me on a mailing list so that we could discuss a common interface between Gems developers and Linux distributions, but once again, that did not actually happen.
2-3 years ago debian called out for python developers to help port and all the remaining python2 packages to python3 so that in the future we could drop python2 support. Being pretty familiar with python and somewhat familiar with migrating python2 projects I decided to join the project.
The process of porting mostly involved trying to talk to existing maintainers and seeing if they are already porting the packages and if they are not suggesting that you could help if they needed. I have sent dozens of emails and I got maybe 2 replies. Those were direct emails to the maintainers. Eventually I got so frustrated with how slow and disorganized the process was that I decided to drop it.
When I commented that with other debian contributors they expressed that this was a very old problem and that there is not much that can be done about it since the debian developers are volunteers and likely have other responsibilities other than maintaining their packages.
In retrospect I think debian in particular needs an automatic way to ask maintainers every now and then if they are still willing to maintain their respective packages and if they are not or do not respond in a timely fashion, put them up for adoption.
- vbernat 9y agoMost Python packages are team-maintained in Debian. I don't know what you mean by "porting", but if it's just deleting Python 2 packages, that won't help: they are easy to maintain and they are still useful. If you mean porting the actual code of each package to Python 3, it's a work to be done upstream. Packagers have enough to do with packaging.
- jancsika 9y ago> I have sent dozens of emails and I got maybe 2 replies. Those were direct emails to the maintainers. Doesn't this necessarily mean that Debian only has 2 active maintainers for all those Python packages? I say "necessarily" because you said Debian put out a call for Python developers to participate. If you answered the call, and only 2 of N maintainers of the relevant packages could be reached, then a functioning project with sensible defaults could say a) 2 of N is a quorum, b) congratulations-- you now have temporary control over the abandoned packages subject to later review (they have a testing repo, no?), or c) let's swoop in and trioche the situation by using other maintainers. Only "c" would be subject to the stock Debian reply of "Debian maintainers are mostly volunteers and there is a limited number of said volunteers and why don't you become a volunteer and well, why don't you volunteer to improve the docs, then, etc."