list migration due to alioth shutdown

Peter Schober peter.schober at univie.ac.at
Mon Jan 29 11:18:24 UTC 2018


* Etienne Dysli-Metref <etienne.dysli-metref at switch.ch> [2018-01-29 11:04]:
> On 28/01/18 21:37, Peter Schober wrote:
> > Do you intend to migrate the list to lists.debian.org (if eligible, [1])?
> > Or to the temporary (!) replacement at alioth-lists.debian.net?
> 
> Given [1], I doubt we would be eligible for lists.debian.org. How do
> the policies for the current list differ from that of
> lists.debian.org?

Well, for Alioth there was a pre-defined purpose and structure for
"Collaborative maintenance of a set of related packages", see section
2 of https://wiki.debian.org/Alioth/PackagingProject

But I haven't found anything concrete confirming that the purpose of
this list definitvely does not satisfy the criteria for a list at
lists.d.o -- and honestly, if Debian doesn't provide ongoing
infrastrucure for their own packaging teams that would be silly. How
can the activity on this list not be considered in Debian's and its
community's own best interest?

(Interestingly they don't have an obvious Category for packaging
coordination lists on lists.d.o, so this would either be "Developers"
or "Miscellaneous Debian" or "Other".)

> Another option mentioned on [2] is to have a team address like
> team+foo at tracker.debian.org. However, tracker.debian.org does not
> offer archives so that's a drawback IMHO.

I can't claim I fully understood that offering, but I'd agree that
this reason alone might make this less than ideal.

> Since about half of the packages are using alioth mailing lists in
> the Maintainer field (according to [3]), the temporary service would
> be a good option while another service is being worked out for that
> purpose (if I read that correctly).

AFAIU Debian wouldn't be too happy if there now was a push to
re-upload packages solely to replace the Maintainer: field. And if you
can't do that everywhere (esp. stable) we'd still have to make sure
the current address remains reachable. So yes, the temporary service
would take care of that concern. Existing lists will remain reachable,
and list config (members, archives) can be migrated.

I just don't see the point of this migration, since (1) it's been
declared a temporary fix (so guarantees more/the same work again down
the road) and (2) I expect Debian to not force its own DDs and
maintainers and collaborating upstream devs to search for
(non-temporary) mailing list services elsewhere on the net in order to
do their unpain work for the project. I may be wrong, of course.

-peter



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