Challenges -- Who's havesting fixes.
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Wed May 24 07:42:35 UTC 2006
Hi Stef -
First, I'm not sure what you mean by "bashing". Really, if I bash
something or someone it looks usually quite different from what I wrote.
I would even go as far and claim that what I wrote is something that you
could probably relate to if you were trying to do some package
maintenance independent from the image maintenance.
But since you asked let's stay calm and look at a few things: For one
thing, I have not seen any message asking about new versions recently;
the last time I saw a message where you asked for it
(http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-January/099843.html)
I responded quite explicitly pointing to the latest versions
(http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2006-January/099871.html)
If there has been anything in the meantime please point me to it.
Second, let's look at Mantis. For the issues reported in the categories
of packages that I maintain there is no indication that they have any
relations to the changes that happened downstream, which indeed leads me
to believe that, yes, I am the only person harvesting these packages,
dealing with the reported bugs and fixes (the other reason is that I
would expect anyone interested in helping with it to contact me to get
access to the upstream repositories which I'd be happy to grant but
which hasn't happened yet). And really, there is nothing wrong with that
- I said I'd deal with the issues and I am as you can see if you look at
Mantis and the issues that were resolved since I said I'd do it.
[BTW, for those not following that process almost all of the fixes have
a discussion thread attached to it which goes to show that I typically
don't just take the fixes but rather go over them carefully discuss the
necessary details and integrate them afterwards (or reject them; that
happens as well) - a process which takes quite a bit of time and care
and which makes it particularly frustrating to deal with downstream
changes that just "show up" in an image. I also try to keep the packages
in sync between the various versions that I use (Squeak, Tweak,
Tinlizzie, Croquet) and that's even harder].
Third, when I was looking at the latest 3.9, I found that all but a
single package that I am involved in with maintenance one way or another
(Balloon, Compression, FFI, Flash, Graphics, ToolBuilder, TrueType; the
single exception being the GraphicsTests package) have downstream
modifications that are not in the upstream repositories. Now, I can
understand why this is *sometimes* necessary, but when I start looking
at the changes in detail then I found that many of them aren't required
by other changes (which is the main reason why I could see that they had
to be included downstream) and that most of these changes really should
have been done upstream (if at all - they really should be subject to
the same review process that I am running for changes reported at Mantis
because otherwise they have a really unfair advantage). And I can't for
the heck of it find even a single Mantis report at all for any of these
changes (and again, if there are, please point me to it) or even an
attempt to communicate about these changes (e.g., no emails that I could
find talking about these changes either) - they just "appeared" in the
image at some point (and again if there is a place where these things
are discussed please point me to it).
All in all, I believe this entitles me to say that for me it's
frustrating to see these downstream changes that are done outside of the
currently defined processes, which I believe include that the
responsibilities for harvesting done in a package lie with the package
maintainer not with the downstream image maintainer and that changes
should generally be documented at mantis. And if I'm wrong about this,
I'd really like a clarification to understand what exactly the role of a
maintainer is and what is expect of this role. Because the way it is
right now it *is* frustrating to do package maintenance and all your
yelling and screaming won't really change that.
Cheers,
- Andreas
stéphane ducasse wrote:
> andreas
>
> you mean you are harvesting your packages but nobody else!
> Now I asked several time to get some new version of the maintained
> packages and I got
> no answer so far.
> So please do not bash us if we harvested a change that was for your
> package.
> I do not like this kind of game!
>
> Stef
>
> On 24 mai 06, at 07:54, Andreas Raab wrote:
>
>> Peace Jerome wrote:
>>>>> All I wanted was an official answer to the question
>>>>> "Who's havesting fixes."
>>>> so far me and (marcus but he stopped).
>>>>
>>> Ok. Thank you for the direct answer. (And for taking
>>> the responsibily.)
>>
>> Actually, this is only partially correct. Fixes that belong to
>> packages are harvested by the package maintainers. It is quite
>> frustrating for a package maintainer to see downstream modifications
>> magically appear in some image without even knowing about them.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> - Andreas
>>
>
>
>
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