[Soc-coordination] GSOC idea for next year: undusting some packages

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 01/10/08 at 07:10 +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Maybe this blog post of mine, as of today, should be posted here:
> 
> ===============================================================
> Maintaining our key packages
> 
> Has anyone noticed how loosely APT is maintained since about...several years?
> 
> Michael Vogt is currently the person doing uploads and work but, being
> committed to other things (IIRC in Ubuntu...or in real life), he
> certainly can't devote enough time for this.
> 
> Otavio Salvador helped from time to time, either merging patches or
> doing some uploads.
> 
> Daniel Burrows contributed in some bugs, as he's obviously directly
> interested in APT, being the maintainer of aptitude.
> 
> And I'm doing l10n maintenance... That's *all*.
> 
> So, I don't fear saying that one of our key tools is badly maintained
> and not in the best shape it could be. I wish that some really good
> and experienced Debian developers get interested in it and, maybe,
> mentor some non DD's currently in the NM queue, instead of folks
> beiong encouraged to ITP any piece of crap they can find on
> sourceforge (sometimes, ITPs look like this to me).
> 
> Think about it if you are an experienced C/C++ programmer.
> 
> Another idea could be to devote some GSOC slots, next year, to bug
> triaging/fixing in such packages. Summer 2009 could be a good
> opportunity as Lenny is probably released by then and we'll be quite
> far from squeeze freeze, so heavily changing key package can be done.

I strongly disagree.

GSOC is a really nice opportunity to explore new areas, develop new
pieces of infrastructure, etc, by getting new people involved in Debian.

But maintaining our key packages is the key thing Debian provides.
Using bounties or sponsorship money to allow people to work on them
sounds totally wrong: how are we going to survive without money?

I'm not denying that we have a problem with our key packages. But we
should try to solve it by improving our workflow for maintenance and bug
triaging, making it easier for people to contribute to those packages
(also people from other distros who share an interest in those
packages). Some teams are already trying to globalize their successful
workflows (like the perl team), but that's currently targetted at teams
handling lots of packages. Maybe someone should start a similar
initiative, trying to gather experience from people working on
"difficult" packages.
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas at nussbaum.fr             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
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