On Mar 31, 2007, at 11:20 AM, Mark Duling wrote:
macports-dev@lists.macosforge.org on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at 10:25 AM -0800 wrote:
Revision [ http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/changeset/23415 ]23415 Author landonf@macports.org Date 2007-03-31 10:25:27 -0700 (Sat, 31 Mar 2007)
Log Message
Claiming ownership of my port entirely.
Are there ports where you are listed maintainer that you shouldn't be? I think to be sure someone respects your maintainership, you should make sure that you are only listed as maintainer one ones you really actively maintain. I really wan't aware you were still active and I supposed there were a bunch of ports that you used to maintain and currently didn't but never formally relinquished. For example, I just updated openldap days ago and you are listed as maintainer. But there have been 3 verifiable bugs filed against it for ages and the port was pretty outdated.
I'm pretty sure I'm still active =) http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/search?q=landonf&changeset=on Of the three OpenLDAP bugs, the only bug actually assigned to me was an enhancement request. It was opened prior to trac ever sending e- mail, and so I never actually saw the bug. The port wasn't significantly outdated -- I was intentionally was tracking the 2.2.x branch. That said, I saw the bug that you filed on Wednesday, and it all looked fine. I had planned on addressing it this weekend, but you beat me to it.
In my view, MacPorts only keeps functioning because of the efforts of a few that sometimes need to bend the rules with some judgement, because there aren't enough people concerned with fixing bugs that we can reasonably expect those people to adhere to all the rules we set up. If we had more people doing it we could more closely adhere to the standards we've setup. A bureaucratic system with few people doesn't work very well when those few have to choose between getting things done for others and maximizing their volunteer time.
I'm not criticizing or complaining, I'm just saying how things appear to me because, frankly, I bend the rules a lot because I don't see another way right now. The project seems to have more users than it once did and tickets are opened faster, but it doesn't seem like there are many responsive maintainers so that we rely on a few consistent bug chasers and committers that sometimes bend the rules to keep from getting swamped by tickets.
I agree that the maintainer flag should be considered a mutex -- I certainly don't have time to keep tabs on updates and bugs every single port I maintain. However, I do think discretion is a must -- if you're white-space reformatting the entire port, doubling it in length and complexity, and adding dependence on undocumented private functions, something is probably wrong -- especially when it's something like zlib, which is a hugely important system dependency. -landonf