[Debian-olpc-devel] 'rainbow' uploaded to mentors.debian.net

Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk
Fri Aug 28 16:27:59 UTC 2009


On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 02:58:05PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 02:50:32PM +0200, mentors.debian.net wrote:
>>The upload of the package 'rainbow' to mentors.debian.net was
>>successful. URL of your package is:
>>http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/r/rainbow
>
>No need to use mentors.debian.net when part of the OLPC team: We are 
>multiple Debian developers that can take care of the injection into 
>Debian.

Sorry for not elaborating before...

You are of course welcome to work however you want, including 
maintaining packages on your own with the help of the Mentors team.  But 
if you choose that path, then please avoid confusion by removing the 
OLPC Team as maintainer of such packages, and instead maintain them on 
your own.

Obviously, I would prefer if you stay with the OLPC Team, and let Debian 
developers in the team release for Debian rather than going through 
Mentors.

I prefer a certain packaging style (git+cdbs) and I personally will want 
to stay with that packaging style also for the packages that I with you 
or others on maintaining.

In other words, you can...

  * work outside of the OLPC Team (but please be consistent then)
  * work with me using my preferred packaging style
  * work with others in the OLPC Team (if you can wake them up)


I really do want to encourage your work, even if done differently than 
what I like myself. I only want to clarify how the approaches differ.


If you want to do it "my way", then...

  1) prepare a packaging using Git
  2a) if more work needed, set distribution to UNRELEASED in changelog
  2b) if release-ready, set distribution to unstable in changelog
  3) upload your work so far to the collab-maint area at Alioth
     (or tell us here at this list if you want help with doing that)
  4) post to this list the Git URL of the prepared packaging
  5) when release-ready, some of us (i.e. me) verify and release

the UNRELEASED hinting is inspired by the Perl team: 
http://pkg-perl.alioth.debian.org/policy.html#debian_changelog_handling_and_versioning

When using Git, it is generally easier to handle things like reverting 
and cherry-picking for other packages if you separate changelog changes 
from actual code changes. That is, don't use "debcommit -a", but instead 
use plain "git commit", perhaps use "git dch" and then - as frequently 
as you please - update changelog and do "git commit debian/changelog".

Doing it "my way" means the one releasing officially for Debian gets 
her/his name in the timestamp line of the changelog entry, even if all 
actual changes was done by someone else that was not approved to upload 
to Debian.  Like this:



sugar-pippy-activity (xyz) unstable; urgency=low

   [ Luke Faraone ]
   * Some marvellous packaging improvement.
   * Some clever bugfix, closing bug#123456.
   * Another cool bugfix.

  -- Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk>  Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:38:53 +0100



When working with mentors.debian.net you probably get to have your own 
name at the timestamp line.

The reason for my wanting it differently is not that I want to steal 
your fame, but that I want it easiest possible to locate the one 
responsible for a packaging release, independently from those doing the 
actual code changes.



Hope that all makes sense. :-)


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

-- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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