[maemo-developers] Is mauku open source, i.e free or is in non-free?

[From: Tuomo Tanskanen]

Hi,

I'll fill in my experience, similar to Riku's.

On 01/28/2010 12:59 PM, Voipio Riku (Nokia-D/Helsinki) wrote:
> On 01/27/2010 05:04 PM, ext Dave Neary wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Riku Voipio wrote:
>>> Well, such misunderstandings are likely to be caused by the poor extras
>>> instructions. Which exact page should Henrik read to get enlightened?
>>
>> David King&   I are working on improving these. Having not gone through
>> the process myself, I need help. Your questions are great, because they
>> help me identify the questions I need to ask&   get answered.
>
> As someone who went through the whole undocumented experience of getting
> a package to extras, I can help in any questions.

My experience is based on documentation in December 09, so very recent 
and I don't see much of a change in documentation since, so it applies 
pretty well to current situation.

>> For the current best information on uploading to extras, there are:
>>
>> http://wiki.maemo.org/Uploading_to_extras and
>
> This document is generally ok, but the link to next step, extras-testing
> leaves developers lost.

Document in generally OK, but what bothers me with most of the 
documentation is that they're more or less often outdated, filled with 
Diablo or Chinook related information. Same thing with Uploading to 
extras document. It should be primarily about the current process, and 
the old stuff should be moved to separate legacy documents. Its really 
tiresome to read lots of obsolete documentation just to find out they 
help you nowhere and you've wasted your precious time.

> http://wiki.maemo.org/Extras-testing
>
> Which is, in fact, a document for endusers and testers, not developers.

True, and the link pointing to previous document uses a broken anchor, 
so you need to locate the information yourself.

> At this point the, developer faces a bunch of questions;
>
> 1) where did my package go after dput

I think "where package went" it was documented well enough in Upload to 
extras documentation, but not where YOU should go to find it.

> 2) what exactly do I need to "promote" the package

The promotion process is shortly described in the Uploading.. document. 
Finding your package from package interface for devel is a pain btw (why 
isn't there an alphabetical quicklinks, only 6 links to following pages 
without even showing  total number of pages...)

> 3) how can I follow the whole process

Obviously, if you find your package above you can see the process :) It 
took me some time to figure out that too.

> Eventually I found the
>
> http://maemo.org/packages/view/package/
>
> link, and figured out that one needs to click on latest armel version
> while being logged in, to see the "promote" link.
>
> (Why are x86 packages shown in the first place here?)

+1 for the question.

> After you have got this far, you get your first tester that tells you
> that you need to have bugtracker. Ofcourse, this was not documented on
> any of the previous steps, and conviniently not mentioned at
> extras-testing wikipage either. Google to help. Apparently one needs
> a XSBC-Bugtracker: field in debian/control and request a bugzilla
> section at bugs.maemo.org.

True, thats a typical experience: first thing they say is you miss a 
bugtracker and friendly name (possibly an icon too!) and neither of 
those are mentioned in above pages either.

> Next, once one has managed to get the 10 votes, one is left wondering
> what happens. Apparently one will get a mail about "promotion unlocked"
> when you can finally push it to extras.

This is covered in Extras testing document, with a big nice "NOT FINAL 
FIXME" reminder. Also the chapter content looks like guesswork as well.

BTW, you need 10 karma, 10 days of quarantine (this is very easily 
forgotten and can be seen by people asking 'I got 25 votes and I see no 
promote buttons, omglolbbq!') and supposedly, 3 senior tester votes (I 
still don't know who or what is considered senior tester, or if this 
actually is correct information)

> Now people are asking me to add a "screenshot". But I couldn't find out
> where or howto do that. Turns out the promoting to extras creates a:
>
> http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/package/
>
> page. But even after loggin in, there is no explanation howto add a
> screenshot...

That little pesky, hovering toolbar is a real pain in the bottocks, but 
it turns out to be the thing to modify stuff in Midgard. Horrible 
implementation of such toolbar BTW.

> What is worrying, that this was a major struggle for me. And I
> actually know a lot about debian and maemo, how much more lost
> someone who just arrived to maemo would be?

Yeah, I second this. It can definately scare people off, and to top that 
with permission required to upload stuff delays, (old) servers response 
time problems lately etc, it can easily scare people off.

Also not having SSO is very annoying and search feature sucking is one 
major letdown as well, especially when you try finding documentation for 
these things.

That turned out to be rather lengthy, thanks for reading this far :)

Cheers, Tuomo

PS. Is someone working on Karma system, mines been stuck for 2 weeks or 
so now... :)