Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 05:34:21PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> On Jun 05, Arwed von Merkatz [v.merkatz AT gmx.net] wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 12:45:19PM -0700, Andrew Stitt wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 02:35:12PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> > > > On Jun 04, Arwed von Merkatz [v.merkatz AT gmx.net] wrote:
> > > > > there's a quite old bug[1] about getting MAINTAINER files in a state
> > > > > that we can have per-spell maintainer declarations again.
> > > > > The basic idea is that we would have a hierarchy of MAINTAINER 
> > > > > files,
> [...]
> > > > We will want some kind of concept of how we're going to keep these
> > > > from going stale before we let people start claiming individual
> > > > spells.  It's too common for people to do an update or two and then
> > > > disappear, and no one is sure if they really still maintain it or
> > > > not.  We could only allow individual spells to have a maintainer if
> > > > the section they are in has a maintainer and that person approves.
> > > > That way the management of the maintainer status has a hierarchy as
> > > > well that is more likely to work.  That might kill the point, though.
> [...]
> > > I guess I just dont see it being of any use, and like last time this
> > > was attempted, quickly becoming stale. Over time we'll come the same
> > > conclusion about it as we did last time.

I have to admit that I totally forgot about that issue ;)

> >  
> > True, but people seem to want _some_ way of claiming maintainership of
> > spells. Doing that in the section MAINTAINER file as it's done in the
> > mail section has the same problem though.
> 
> Well, if we only allow people to claim individual spells in sections that
> are maintained, the question of "who keeps these current" is answered as
> "the section maintainer", and that's not unreasonable.  Doing that in a
> section MAINTAINER file like mail does makes the maintainer's job doing so
> easy as well.  Of course the problem with this is it only lets certain
> spells list an individual maintainer and probably raises again the question
> of how spells should really be organized.

Ok, let's still delay the whole organization problem for a bit.
So how about 'standardizing' how the MAINTAINER file in sections looks
like then, based on the mail one:
Full Name of section maintainer <mail of section maintainer>

spellname - name of spell maintainer <mail of spell maintainer>
another spell - name of maintainer <mail of maintainer>
...

That's simple enough and keeps the section maintainer easily accessible to
tools like our page_six bot. The section maintainer would be the one
managing the file.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org