[maemo-developers] Email addresses in debian/changelog

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Feb 17, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Eduardo Lima (Etrunko) wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Jeremiah Foster
> <jeremiah at jeremiahfoster.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>>       My understanding is that the line in the maemopad changelog,  
>> "Maemo
>> Integration <integration at maemo.org>" is an email address that ends up
>> at Nokia. Can an email address connected to a human be put there
>> instead?
>>
>
> (Cross posting to maemo-developers)
>
> I have a slightly different use case that pretty much resembles the
> described above. I've been maintaining quite a few packages for a
> while where the maintainer email is the address of a mailing list
> @garage.maemo.org. Would it be ok to leave it like that or it goes
> somehow against the debian "best practices manual". In the end, it is
> connected to not only one, but all the people who are subscribed to
> the list.

I can see how this would be a good idea, but can we add a group list  
in addition to have an individual packager's email?

For example, I work with the debian-perl team and we co-maintain about  
1,000 packages. So when a bug comes in we track it and we all can act  
on it since we all get notified. But in the changelog we have both the  
name of the person who changed things in the package and in the  
control file we have the group email address, like this;

---
changelog
---

   libtest-file-perl (1.25-1) unstable; urgency=low

     * Initial Release. (Closes: #512774)

    -- Jeremiah C. Foster <jeremiah at jeremiahfoster.com>  Tue, 10 Feb  
2009 17:09:18 +0100

---
control
---

Source: libtest-file-perl
Section: perl
Priority: optional
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7)
Build-Depends-Indep: perl (>= 5.6.0-12), libtest-manifest-perl (>=  
1.14), libtest-pod-perl, libtest-pod-coverage-perl
Maintainer: Debian Perl Group <pkg-perl-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org 
 >
Uploaders: Jeremiah C. Foster <jeremiah at jeremiahfoster.com>

This shows that bug reports will go to the _maintainer_ of the  
package, i.e. Debian Perl Group but the person that physically made  
changes to the package is listed in the changelog. This is good  
because if there is a bug we can find out why it was introduced, or  
who fixed it, or when it was added and by whom. This increases  
accountability and transparency, both good things I feel.

So, if we want to be closer to debian and to increase transparency, I  
think we should make sure the person who last touched the package put  
their name in the changelog. We can always add the group email address  
to the control log.

How does this sound?

Regards,

Jeremiah