Re: [gnu.misc.discuss,gnu.emacs.gnus] Free software: Packagers vs Developers
>>>>> "Gunnar" == Gunnar Evermann <ge204@eng.cam.ac.uk> writes:
Gunnar> Concerning the relationship between the XEmacs developers
Gunnar> and the packager for Debian -- it's non-existent as far as
Gunnar> I know. I have never seen a single post on any of the
Gunnar> XEmacs development mailing list or a bug report from said
Gunnar> maintainer. So either the packaging is so brilliant that
Gunnar> users of XEmacs on Debian never have problems or the
Gunnar> touted Debian process of filtering bug reports from users
Gunnar> and forwarding helpful info "upstream" didn't work in this
Gunnar> case.
I think that James LewisMoss was too busy otherwise (home life, job,
school, whatever) to spend that amount of time on it. I've got
several hours a day for it through the summer... Hopefully it'll be
fairly squared away by fall term. The current state of things is
pretty good, as handed me by James.
We can't read email all day long.
Gunnar> I think there was even a case where one of the XEmacs
Gunnar> developers has dug a helpful patch from a user out of the
Gunnar> Debian BTS, this was AFAIK not prompted by any hints from
Gunnar> the Debian people.
echo '.' | mail -s 'index packages emacs' request@bugs.debian.org
There are quite a few, and many ought to be merged. It will take
several hours for me, I think. I will learn something in the
process, and perhaps think of how to make a minor-mode extension for
Gnus or something to ease our labor.
If there are patches, I'll find them (at some point), and if they are
still valid and not already in the devel branch of XEmacs, I'll
submit them to the XEmacs patch review board for review.
Gunnar> I am not really complaining about all this [1], we do have
Gunnar> lots of bug reports directly from our users, but you
Gunnar> should realise that the process of actually maintaining a
Gunnar> Debian package involves far more than the initial
Gunnar> packaging -- I am sure this is discussed in the Policy
Gunnar> Manual, but I suspect that many Debian developers
Gunnar> underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to
Gunnar> _maintain_ their package after uploading it and therefore
Gunnar> the quality of the Distribution (and Free Software in
Gunnar> general) suffers. This is maybe not as bad as having the
Gunnar> packager and the author flaming each other but still a
Gunnar> problem.
I expect to spend at least 4 to 6 hours a day all summer long on the
XEmacs package and keeping up with mail... (too much mail. I HAVE
to burn it and get on with the package building and my READING.)
`apt-get source pkgname'
`zless pkgname.diff.gz'
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