Recapitulate the current state of Fedora Extras and some ideas to make it better

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Sonntag, den 09.07.2006, 13:41 -0500 schrieb Matt Domsch:
> On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 06:31:51PM +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > Michael Schwendt schrieb:
> > > On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 15:42:35 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > >>  * FESCo
> > >>   * The old FESCo didn't work to well. A lot of members weren't very
> > >> active. A lot of stuff was still discussed, but a lot of things didn't
> > >> get done. Some things were discussed and agreed on, but not documented
> > >> in the wiki.
> > > There ought to be a web page with announcements. The history of decisions
> > > made by FESCo. 
> > I think the FESCo meeting summaries should have a section annoucements.
> > But I oppose a web page with a decision history. Decisions should be
> > documented at a proper place where they belong (for exmplae the
> > dead.package mechanism should be documented on the extras-cvs-faq page.
> > Or in a maintainer guide). They need to be documented there in any case
> > >>   * Sponsors should be able to "subscribe" to the people they sponsored
> > >> -- e.g. they should get additional mails when people they sponsored
> > >> commit something to cvs, requested a build ...
> > > Not necessary for commits.
> > I'd like to have them for commits.
> procmail.
> # Filter for my own packages
> :0 Hc
> * ^X-BeenThere:.*fedora-extras-commits at redhat.com
> * ? formail -x"Subject:" | egrep -is -f $HOME/.procmail-fedora-extras-packages
> $HOME/Mail/fe-mypackages

Sure, that's a solution (at least for all those that use procmail). But
I'd prefer a solution on the server side that gets maintained
automatically because a local setup is much more likely to break
(package renames, forgetting to add new packages,...). 

Also imagine people like spot -- he sponsored 31 people (don't know how
many packages they own) and owns 94 packages. Do you want to main a
$HOME/.procmail-fedora-extras-packages file for him? That's what
computers are good for.

Also: People tend to set up filters wrongly. During the "FAKE: Fedora
Extras shipped popular package with rootkit and more than ten thousands
systems were infected" discussion I chatted with a contributor
privately. He told me that he won't miss commits from other people to
his packages because be has a filter that (as he thought) copies all
commits to his packages to a special folder. But after one or to minutes
he said -- "OMG -- I set up the filter wrongly -- it only copies commits
that are from me to that folders, so I won't miss all the commits from
other people to my packages."

> > > Full name and user name are in the "From"
> > > line in the mail header and in the "Author:" field of the body.
> > Username might change and thus break local filters. Local filter can be
> > forgotten. Or set up wrongly.
> > Also non-sponsors might be interested in this feature as well.
> Sure, it can be over-engineered, but need it be?

That's why the initial mail had "[...] should be realized soon and what
can be worked on later (or ignored completely)." ;-)

CU
thl