Request to join the team

[Ross Gammon]

Hi Gabor,

I am glad to hear you would like to join the team.

On 11/25/2017 11:16 AM, Gabor Karsay wrote:
> Dear Debian Multimedia Maintainers,
>
> I'd like to join the team to help with packaging and also to get some
> help with my own package. I'm the upstream author and maintainer of
> Parlatype which was kindly reviewed by Juhani Numminen and Ross Gammon
> and sponsored by Ross. It would be nice if it could be included in
> pkg-multimedia-maintainers.
>
> I have some knowledge in C (in combination with GObject/GTK+),
> autotools and a bit of Python. I learned it myself, I didn't visit a
> technical school or university.
>
> I used to package my own program for a while (for private/learning
> purposes and in launchpad). I started originally with Ubuntu, now my
> primary distro is Debian stable (actually still oldstable) and
> unstable next to it. I'm familiar with git, but I didn't use it for
> packaging yet, so the workflow of git-buildpackage is new for me.
>

There is some help for using git for packaging on our wiki:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/DevelopPackaging

But I find the Debian GIS Team have the most thorough guide that I have
seen (particularly about setting up & getting started):
http://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/policy/index.html

Of course, the documentation on gbp is a pretty good reference as you
get going:
http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/git-buildpackage/manual-html/index.html

> I'd like to help with some "easy" packages for the start, small
> applications, no libraries. I spotted some of them, for example
> devede. I also noticed a lot of packages with uscan errors which seems
> like a good task for the start.

Yes, ones that have not been uploaded for a long time, or with uscan
errors are a good start. Ones that you use (and know well) are also a
good idea.
This query will pick up which ones on the team have a maintainer that
has gone missing:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?maint=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org;tag=mia-teammaint;users=mia@qa.debian.org
It is best to check with the current maintainer before starting, just in
case they were about to do something, or have some half finished work
(or just as a courtesy).

>
> I'm subscribed to pkg-multimedia-maintainers, pkg-multimedia-commits,
> I have an Alioth account, I'm kind of familiar with the technical side
> of managing bugs (but less with the policy, e.g. are bugs closed when
> fixed in unstable, testing or stable?), I agree to review other's
> patches and packages although I think others probably know better than
> me.
>

If you let me know your Alioth user name, I can add you to the team.
Generally we upload to unstable. If the upload fixes a bug, we close the
bug with suitable text in the changelog, and the bug will automatically
closed (like the ITP bug for parlatype). After a time, and some
automatic checks, the package will migrate to testing automatically
(parlatype has one more day to go). Only for serious or critical bugs
would we upload to stable. There is more about this in:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/index.en.html

I always find Raphael Hertzog's guide to bug triage really useful:
https://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/09/16/how-to-triage-bugs-in-the-debian-bug-tracking-system/

> Like most humans I have limited free time, my contributions would be
> occasional but I'm confident that both the team and me would benefit
> from membership. 

Also guilty!

Welcome to the team. Just ask here for help with our packages, and for
general Debian packaging/bug questions, I recommend Debian Mentors.
Actually, I recommend using Mentors anyway until you have a few uploads
under your belt because other newcomers benefit from the answers to your
questions. If you want me to create the repository on Alioth for
parlatype for you, just let me know.

Regards,

Ross