maintaining lots of packages (was Re: ESR "fedora-submit")

[Steven Pritchard]

I didn't see any real answers to this, so I'll give it a shot...

On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 07:18:08PM -0500, Michael Tiemann wrote:
> I'd like to see somebody who is maintaining at least 30, and perhaps
> 50 packages explain how *they* do it. Maybe they have a better way.
> Maybe it drives them almost as crazy Eric. How *does* a maintainer of
> 36 packages would with the Fedora process? How *should* one do it?
> This is the question and the problem to be solved.

I maintain a bunch (98 at the moment) of perl-related packages.  Three
things make the perl packages easy to maintain:

* CPAN has enough metadata to figure out if something needs an update,
  and, if so, where to get it.
* The perl packages mostly follow a clear template.
* The majority of those packages run "make test", so, generally
  speaking, if the package builds, it works.

I have a script called cpancheck (an older version is available at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/UsefulScripts) that I use to find
any of the perl packages that need to be updated.  If any packages
need to be updated, I use cpanspec (in Extras) to download the latest
source and generate a new spec for each.  I use a script called bump
(not on Extras/UsefulScripts, but probably should be) to update EVR of
the spec in CVS, add a new changelog entry, and do some repetitive
cleanup.  I then diff the output of cpanspec with the updated spec in
CVS to make sure there aren't any necessary changes in BuildRequires
and such.  (I try really hard to make the spec match cpanspec output,
either by changing the spec or cpanspec, to make this easier.)

At that point, all that's left is a test build and rpmlint check
(which, admittedly, sometimes I skip if I'm just building in the
development branch) before I "cvs commit && make tag && make plague".

I don't have all this as automated as I could yet, mostly because I
just haven't spent the time to script it all out yet.  I'll probably
get everything done just in time for the whole process to change.  :-)

For the non-perl packages, I basically only mess with them when I am
told about an upgrade (either through whatever mailing list or a user
letting me know in Bugzilla) or when we're doing mass rebuilds shortly
before a new release.  Even given that, I probably spend more time on
the dozen or so non-perl packages that I maintain than I do on all of
the perl packages combined.

Steve
-- 
Steven Pritchard - K&S Pritchard Enterprises, Inc.
Email: steve at kspei.com             http://www.kspei.com/
Phone: (618)398-3000               Mobile: (618)567-7320