[maemo-developers] Maintenance of ported apps

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 7:13 AM, Ville M. Vainio wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 4:57 AM,  <maemo at bitblit.net> wrote:
> 
>> Im very interested in porting apps to Maemo but I have concerns about the
>> long-term maintenance of the apps.

Unfortunately the process is not codified, many assumptions are made. For example, the expectation is that if you have found an application or library you like in debian and have ported it to maemo, you will continue to take care of it as the OS and app changes. 

Now, there are no loss of privileges if you fail to keep the package up to date or if you go MIA, like there is in debian. It is a bit of a grey area as to what happens if someone else wants to take over your package if it is out of date. This process is somewhat informal in debian with some unwritten rules. One of the unwritten rules is that it is considered inappropriate to "hijack" someone else's package. I think this is a good rule and something we should consider.

>> Porting a GTK app to Maemo requires
>> some significant chznges, so what happens when a newer version of the GTK
>> app appears?

One reads the changelog and determines if the changes are appropriate for the maemo platform, taking the appropriate action if they are.

>> Will in need to be ported 'again'?

Essentially you should just have to apply any patches, re-build the package, and upload a diff to the autobuilder in the usual way.

>> Should changes for Maemo
>> be merged back upstream?

If you have made local changes then yes. Otherwise you are sort of forking.

Jeremiah