<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On May 15, 2009, at 9:29, Qole wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 1:44 AM, Jeremiah Foster <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jeremiah@jeremiahfoster.com">jeremiah@jeremiahfoster.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> To summarize a bit; I think the feedback I am receiving is that I need<br> to be more proactive and visible in places like iTT and take up the<br> discussion with developers about packaging. From my perspective, that<br> means reducing the amount of repository work to some degree and<br> replacing that with "real time" packaging discussions, policy changes,<br> and other documentation.</blockquote></div><br>I also think interacting in the forums and one-on-one with developers having packaging difficulties should be a high priority.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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! :)</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><br>The <a href="http://maemo.org">maemo.org</a> 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. <br> <br>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). <br> <br>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.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div><br><blockquote type="cite">I'm sure the backend server stuff is important too, I just don't know anything about it so I can't comment there.<br clear="all"></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>Jeremiah</div></div><br></body></html>