On 14.01.2008, at 08:57, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
On Jan 13, 2008, at 17:37, Rolf Würdemann wrote:
Am 14.01.2008 um 00:21 schrieb Rainer Müller:
Rolf Würdemann wrote:
But it seems that we need more committers before asking on the website - if we get mainatiners for a quarter of the ports there will be much work (if my case with the one to three weeks was not a single case) ;)
Maybe we should have someone who is responsible for committing updates for particular port categories. I think the problem at the moment is that a port update is committed if someone looked into Trac to see any pending updates... So this is rather random when a port update is committed.
Do you mean a group of people who do nothing but commit things that others submit? If we have people who are interested in performing that function, then sure.
But we don't want everything that's submitted into Trac just blindly committed into Subversion. We need the committer to be aware of the changes that are being made, to police the changes in a way. Don't commit patches that do multiple things; break it into separate patches or ask the contributor to do so. Don't commit patches that make whitespace changes to the entire portfile in addition to functional changes. Don't commit patches that obviously revert a previous revision without the contributor explaining why. Don't commit patches that use inadvisable practices without first discussing these with the contributor. And so forth. In order to know these things, it helps if such a committer is also an accomplished port maintainer/author.
I think what we need are committers who are interested in each category of software. I occasionally look through the unassigned tickets and either try to handle them (new ports, or patches for unmaintained ports) or assign them to their ports' maintainers. But some tickets I don't deal with, like most tickets for Python modules or most Gnome tickets, because I don't use or sufficiently understand Python and Gnome. We need committers who are interested in and proficient in Python and Gnome (and maybe some other categories) who will deal with those tickets.
I think this is the way to go. What do we need? First, we need people to volunteer for group-committers on all groups! Of course individuals can decide themselves whether they cannot perform this task at all or perform it on one or multiple port groups. As Ryan said: he can do it on some (practically does it on several) but not on others... Second, we need to "announce" these port-group committers, i.e., on the MacPorts Wiki. Preferably the committers of a single group are placed on a <group>-commit-pending@ mailing list... Third, some means to assign a committed patch to one or, if appropriate, multiple port groups. Optimally, this would be automatic based on the Portfile. Then the <group>-commit-pending@ is automatically emailed. Obviously, a poor mans version would to request the ticket creator to add the correct <group>-commit-pending@ to the cc: field (good enough for a test of the whole system). Fourth, the people behind <group>-commit-pending@ need the time to look at these tickets on a (nearly) daily basis... From my perspective this is te hardest point! Fifth: we need more volunteers! a) more maintainers b) more people with commit-rights c) group-committers ... Greetings, Jochen -- Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit http://www.Jochen-Kuepper.de Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité GnuPG key: CC1B0B4D Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll