On Sat, Jan 08, 2022 at 10:56:50PM +0200, Otto Urpelainen wrote:
Ok, I start to see this better now. I was under the impression that both
FE-NEEDSPONSOR and the tracker were on equal footing and generally speakin,
receive similar attention from the sponsors. But, if the reason for having
the tracker is (or: originally was) just the co-maintainer requests, where
the primary maintainer actually mentors the new packager, then it makes
sense that just a couple of sponsors keep an eye on that tracker and accept
the request on behalf of the primary maintainers.
> Additionally, I fear it would also leed to 'HI, make me a packager' type
> tickets (with no other info). We could of course close those or ask for
> more info, but then someone has to manage that.
One easy thing that can be done now is to add an issue template to the
tracker repo.
Thats an excellent idea. I'll try and add one.
> > Apart from co-maintenance, the tracker is also important for the case where
> > somebody wants to become a pacakger to rescue an orphaned package.
>
> Well, in the past we have asked such folks to file a review request and
> get the orphaned package re-reviewed.
Interesting. Previously, there was no documented process for handling this
case at all, so I wrote section "Adopting orphaned packages" [1] to How to
Get Sponsored page. As you can see, that section currently points to the
tracker. Do you think we should change that to ask for a re-review? The
current wording is not just my invention, though. There was discussion on
devel first, and the change went through a docs pull request.
In case a review is required, I would like to understand, why? My
understanding was this: Orphaned packages are assumed to be is acceptable
condition, because existing maintainers can adopt them without a review. The
new packager are assumed to be equal to existing maintainers, because
somebody has agreed to sponsor them and is available for mentoring as
needed. Some caution is certainly needed, since some orphaned packages can
be minefields, it just did not occur to me that package review would be the
appropriate safeguard here.
I think the idea was that the person who wanted to take on the orphaned
package could suggest improvements to the existing package to prove that
they know guidelines, etc. At least it shows that they could show they
know the spec file and how to file a review, but I agree this is
somewhat 'make work'.
kevin