Re: nm's helping themselves
On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 11:09:46AM +1100, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> NM Keyring
> Im not sure how the keyring works, but would it be possible to have an
> NM keyring, somewhere for people in the queue to put their key prior to
> it being accepted. That would make it more accessable to people
> processing the application.
I just extract it out of the email message (^K if i am lucky) . The
thing is it really should be in a signed email message to you.
> Would this make it less work, or does someone at debian manually add
> keys to keyrings, in which case it would be just shifting the workload.
Probably wouldn't change much in the workload.
> Skills Check
> What about having an archive of questions which random questions are
> drawn from for the nm to answer.
> So the application manager would just have to judge the quality (and
> timing?) of the answers.
Skills check is pretty easy if they have already built a package.
I just download it, run lintian over it and have a manual look around.
Any problems or quirks I email back some questions about it.
I like to get the package at P&P step because sometimes questions come
up that make the P&P bit more relevant. Things like:
A package had questionable license, I asked why did he chose to put it
into main, referring to DFSG and GPL website.
A maintainer said he was updating his package to be compliant to some
standard version. I asked him what he had to do to make that happen.
A package had a wierd version number, I got the applicant to explain
why it was correct.
version, BTS and NMU questions are usually there. Also if a package has
something special about it I'll ask a question about it. For example,
an applicant had a ftp daemon package (around the time of the wu-ftp
bug iirc) so I asked what would happen if there was a security bug.
Steppign through, this question covers:
BTS and bug priotities
The importance of security bugs (including backporting)
NMU (I said what would happen if he didn't update in some time)
version (due to NMU)
The answer also covered that he would send the patch upstream, which
was good from Philosopy point of view.
I thought it was a good question of something that is quite possible
to happen and a good test of stuff he should know. The answer, BTW,
was very good so I had no problem allowing him and his package into
Debian.
My main point is try if possible to make your questions relevant to the
applicant, using their package as a way of example. It makes it easier
to come up with questions, the applicant had a better chance of
understanding you as opposed to some theorectical question (generally
speaking, the answers to questions when grounded in a specific package
are better than generic non packaged-based questions) and it is
an easily justifiable process (hey, you may have to do this for real
next week).
Hope this helps other NMs.
- Craig
--
Craig Small VK2XLZ GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE 95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5
Eye-Net Consulting http://www.eye-net.com.au/ <csmall@eye-net.com.au>
MIEEE <csmall@ieee.org> Debian developer <csmall@debian.org>
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