[maemo-developers] debmaster priorities [YOUR INPUT HERE]

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On May 15, 2009, at 9:29, Qole wrote:

>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 1:44 AM, Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah at jeremiahfoster.com 
> > wrote:
>
> To summarize a bit; I think the feedback I am receiving is that I need
> to be more proactive and visible in places like iTT and take up the
> discussion with developers about packaging. From my perspective, that
> means reducing the amount of repository work to some degree and
> replacing that with "real time" packaging discussions, policy changes,
> and other documentation.
>
> I also think interacting in the forums and one-on-one with  
> developers having packaging difficulties should be a high priority.

I have started doing this and hope to do more. My radar are not as  
finely tuned as your so if you see a link I ought to jump in on,  
please let me know! :)

>
> The maemo.org community seems to have a large number of very amateur  
> developers (myself included) who see a need and develop a solution  
> to fill that need. These solutions often are written in Python or  
> are composed of a series of shell scripts, so no compiling is  
> necessary. These new developers post their solutions on the forums,  
> and they are very appreciated by the community.
>
> The problem then is that these amateur developers have never  
> packaged an application before, and they don't know how to package  
> the app (make a .deb) and make it available to a wider audience (put  
> it in Extras).
>
> I would love to see the debmaster "pick up the slack" and help get  
> these applications properly packaged, and then, if the community  
> support is strong enough, help get the package into Extras.

I have just blogged about resources for packaging - mainly links to  
get people started. (It wasn't showing up on the planet last I  
checked, I have to check again.) I am going to blog about packaging a  
sample python app and push more documentation to the wiki.

> I'm sure the backend server stuff is important too, I just don't  
> know anything about it so I can't comment there.

The backend stuff is pretty important. For example, when building  
packages for fremantle, certain things have changed. This means that  
packages that are needed as dependencies are not getting built because  
they are not conforming to the new rules. No problem, we'll just get  
in touch with the packagers and tell them about the new rules. Ooops.  
They didn't put their email address in the maintainer field, they  
didn't follow the maemo packaging policy. We cannot reach them.

Building some simple Quality Assurance scripts on the backend repos  
will catch this kind of thing and help keep the repos in good shape  
for everyone, developers and users. I think this is important, but it  
does not seem to be the same type of pressing need. Even if it is a  
pressing need I understand the need to balance that type of work out  
with visible community work, so thanks for your email qole, I  
appreciate the feedback.

Jeremiah

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