"Being a port maintainer" document

[Fernan Aguero]

+----[ Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> (13.Dec.2004 10:04):
|
[snipped]

| -- but we need
| some form of document we can show them that lists the rights and
| responsibilities of port maintainers, so they have an idea of what's
| expected from them.  The porters' handbook does a good job of
| describing the details of constructing a port, but not the
| higher-level aspects of being a port maintainer.

I completely agree.

| e.g.
| 
| * Updating the port when a new version is released
| 
| * Pushing local changes back upstream to the original authors
| 
| * Fixing port errors reported by the package build cluster
| 
| * Dealing with user support requests, at least by pointing them to the
| upstream developers for cases where it's not clearly a FreeBSD
| port-specific problem.
| 
| * Evaluating PRs submitted against the port
| 
| * Responding to change requests in a timely manner (2 weeks).
| 
| * ...

I would add a section on uses and costumes on the
relationship between maintainers and committers.

What mailing lists are read by committers? When is it OK to
bug a committer personally? Is it OK to bug the same
committer that worked on the same port on a previous PR? Do
all committers work on any PR? Or perhaps they like to
restrict themselves to a few areas or categories (perl,
gnome, etc.)

Perhaps this more for a FAQ ... in any case these are all
questions that I've asked myself over time. If you've been
reading a few freebsd mailing lists for some time, you get
to know the answers. Some of these are flexible issues
(every committer/maintainer would of course have their
personal preferences), but I think a rough guide can be of
much help to newbie maintainers.

Fernan

| 
| Can someone write up such a document?
| 
| Kris
|
+----]