About distribution maintainers ([ANNOUNCE] OfflineIMAP v6.3.0 released)

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 11:35:18PM +1100, John Ferlito wrote:

> So I'm finally getting around to updating the debian package and
> pushing it into debian. I've got a couple of question around how the
> project is going to be managed moving forwards. Apologies if I've
> missed any emails regarding this on the list.

No problem. These questions come regulary and I plan to either add them
in the FAQ or write a new doc for distribution maintainers.

> First re my statement above. Is there going to be an "upstream"
> bugtracker?

No. I'd rather much not have one. It asks contributors (including
myself) to do again another task and don't reduce our work load...

>                  How do you intend to track bugs in offlineimap so
> they don't get lost?

I don't intend any dedicated tool for bug tracking. The mailing list
_is_ the support for issues. I know and do use tools for tracking bugs
outside and I find they aren't _that_ usefull. They have their
inconveniences (other than workload): not be up-to-date, duplication,
patches sent would not hit all the reviewers, etc.

I have another approach for quality in general (which includes have no
issues lost). I involve all the community into the release cycles.
Believe me, the end result is better. This way, contributors aren't
asked to do the work themselves. _I_ do the work and give everybody a
chance to comment and involve at any stage. What they all have to do is
review a mail and send a reply to it.

We aren't perfect so errors may still happen but I don't believe our way
of work is to accuse.

>                      Have you though about turning on the Issues
> feature in Github?

Sure, I've though about that. I just don't expect people to help working
on it in the long term and don't want a gap where to put unreviewed
things.

> Are you intending on releasing tar balls or just using the autocreated
> downloads via tags on github? My preference, which I'm guessing would
> be similar for other distro maintainers is to create proper tar
> balls, so they have sane naming.

I won't provide prebuilt tarball because we don't need this feature in
the first place. In fact, we already provide that feature.

I expect from people wanting tarball (especially distribution
maintainers) to either use github feature or clone the repository and
build the tarball by themselves. By chance, the code is free meaning
that anyone can make a good makefile for that purpose and write
documentation on it. ,-)

I guess there is a philosophical approach behind that. I'd much rather
make profit on my time for OfflineIMAP to educate people by giving users
a bit more knowledge (git usage, etc) than assist them in a way creating
dependence like in a vendor/customer link.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht