New Package Process

[Ed Hill]

On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 15:10 -0400, Elliot Lee wrote:
> 
> We /have/ to have someone who is ultimately held accountable for making
> the package work. That's all the package maintainer is. How they get the
> work done (by themselves, through collaboration, etc.) is up to them. I
> agree that encouraging collaboration is good, but that needs to be done
> without compromising the leadership function of the maintainer.

Yeah, this seems fundamental.  So, to keep some level of quality in the
process (creating packages that almost all work), does it follow that:

 - a maintainer can only properly handle so many packages and 
     so many reviews of others' packages

 - lint-like tools and all-around better automation can help 
     but they simply *cannot* replace attentive and clue-full 
     reviewers and maintainers

 - to scale, new maintainers will *need* to be trained and 
     this training process probably deserves as much attention
     as the automated tools, etc.

Or am I way off-base?

Ed

ps - As a packaging newbie, I can attest that the documentation 
   for packaging is damn sparse.  And I made a huge mistake by 
   not spending enough time reading all the existing spec files 
   which, in retrospect, is perhaps the best way to see how 
   things can (or ought to be) done.

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
office:  MIT Dept. of EAPS;  Rm 54-1424;  77 Massachusetts Ave.
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