SDL packaging team revival

[Dominique Dumont]

Le Monday 28 November 2011 15:59:27, Jon Dowland a écrit :
> > - users of SDL libs may not be only games (*)
> 
> I don't see the relevance here.  What difference does the
> Maintainer: field make to users?

It's not about the field. IMO, it's more about the mindset of a packager when 
he considers his users. I concede that's a minor point.

> > - Since Game packaging members are focused on games, SDL libs
> > 
> >   packages are more likely to become victim of bystander apathy [1]
> 
> Thoroughly disagree here.

ok. 

> The games team is an active team with an existing infrastructure/set
> of conventions: active alioth team admins; mailing list conventions;
> tools and infrastructure to monitor bugs and perform QA checks; wiki
> pages etc.

Agreed. 

> Creating a new team means doing all of the above again from scratch.
> It also means any contributor needs to put work in to subscribe to
> a new set of lists; request admin on a new project; learn a whole new
> set of conventions for VCS or whatever: a total pain.

That's why I push for conventions which are shared by games teams (and debian-
perl team). Did I stray far from your practices ?

> Whilst it's true that not all SDL users (in a packaging sense) are
> games, and not all games use SDL; certainly the vast majority in both
> direction do.  And having the SDL packages maintained by an active
> team with the majority of participants having a vested interested in
> their well being, and giving SDL bugs more eyeballs is a great thing
> IMHO.

In theory, you're right. In practice, SDL packages were not updated.

> I'd encourage anyone with the time and motivation to work on SDL to
> consider this avenue as I really believe it's the most sensible.

I'd encourage anyone to work where they're more comfortable. I've got no 
problem if someone wants to take over a SDL lib package and maintain it within 
game team provided it's properly communicated. What matters to me is that 
packages are not left to rot and people time is not wasted. 

> > Let's say folding SDL team is plan B. Let's see first if plan A (SDL
> > team revival) is working.
> 
> If you really feel that's the best way, I wish you the best of luck.

Thanks. 

> > That said, Debian games team members are also welcome to join SDL
> > packaging team.
> 
> Whilst I'm no longer in the games team, the burden/barrier of joining
> a new team and learning a whole new set of conventions on how to do
> stuff etc. as briefly detailed above is too high for me to bother, I'd
> rather put that energy into useful work.

BTW, you were already part of SDL team when I joined. You still are.

All the best

Dominique
--
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