Multimedia Teams in Debian

[Felipe Sateler]

El 21/11/08 16:18 Reinhard Tartler escribió:
> Felipe Sateler <fsateler at gmail.com> writes:

> >> I think the same could work with the "common" multimedia team as well:
> >>
> >> debian-multimedia at lists.debian.org: "General Discussion"
> >> pkg-multimedia-maint at lists.alith.debian.org: "bug flow, etc"
> >>
> >> However, I wouldn't mind if the pkg-multimedia-maint list would set a
> >> Mail-Follow-Up to header to debian-multimedia@ in order to focus
> >> discussion.
> >
> > Hmm, so what would be the point of pkg-multimedia-maint if mails are
> > answered to debian-multimedia?
>
> to avoid cluttering the archive with upload notifications and
> bugmail.  Thinking more about it, that might only be necessary with
> larger teams like the debian games team or the KDE team. pkg-multimedia
> survived pretty well with one single list for both discussion and
> maintainer contact address.

I think it avoids confusion to have a single list. If later on it shows to be 
a problem, the list can be split. Maintaining both lists from the start 
sounds like preemptive optimization to me. 
But I think we are "fighting over sand" here: packages will continue to have 
either list for a while.

>
> >> http://wiki.tauware.de/misc:vcs-packaging
> >> http://wiki.tauware.de/misc:vcs-packaging2
> >
> > You might want to look at vcs-pkg.org
>
> I've made these drawings before vcs-pkg.org was founded. After that,
> Marting and the other guys over there did come to similar conclusions
> but even further reaching conclusions. I at least try to follow their
> discussion mailing lists.

I haven't been following lately, but it appears the current "panacea" is 
TopGit... haven't tried it yet though. I'll give it a spin.

>
> >> Moreover various people have explained their details on how to handle
> >> patches with a DVCS, and with git in particular. The nice thing about
> >> svn here is that you don't have that much choice (because svn does not
> >> offer similar features at all) and discussion on that is avoided. So if
> >> we want to move to git, we must document very carefully the exact way
> >> how to use to tool git.
> >
> > Agreed. Uniformity is key for collaboration across packages.
>
> Ok. What mode do you propose?

I don't think it's important what particular mode is used, as long as it's 
consistent. What I do for csound is an upstream branch tracking releases, and 
a master branch where we use quilt for patch management. I think it makes it 
easier since most patches are short-lived in our case. Other people prefer 
topic branches and an integration branch. This may be better for longer-lived 
patches.
The guys from vcs-pkg seem to swear by this last workflow. TopGit seems to be 
able to generate a linear quilt patchset, which is nice for people wanting to 
review the source package.

>
> >> As a side note, I think we have 2 special packages in pkg-multimedia,
> >> namely ffmpeg-debian/ffmpeg and vlc. I think we should somehow make it
> >> clear that they are special. However that should not be the main concern
> >> for the matter of this discussion, I just wanted to point out that they
> >> are special maintenance wise.
> >
> > Why are they special?
>
> vlc is mainly maintained by xtophe, and previously by sam. Both are vlc
> upstream developers. I think that indeed makes vlc special.
>
> ffmpeg-debian is very special because of its, well interesting,
> packaging. have a look at the latest commits :)

Hmm, OK. Do you fear that "collaborators" will go and mess up your packaging? 
I haven't seen that happen yet. There's nothing wrong with noting special 
packages, though.

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler
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