[clc-devel] External Packagers, take two

[Simone Rota]

On 04/07/04 00:10 Johannes Winkelmann wrote:
> Hey,

Hi,

> On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 13:54:55 +0200, Johannes Winkelmann wrote:
> CLC maintainers, could you write a short comment whether you would be in
> favour of a solution where external packagers are invited to provide
> updated versions of unmaintained ports in their private httpup
> repositories? They could then file a bug report with the URL and any CLC
> maintainer could sync it to CLC CVS. 
> 
> The work required for a CLC maintainer is:
[cut]

> b) for an existing port

> I personally would like such an system, maybe even if I'm working 
> just as maintainer for a package which is maintained by a non-CLC
> person. It would improve the value of the unmaintained collection and
> would allow us to remove ports which haven't been changed in $TIME from
> the repository since we're sure no one cared to update this one. And
> finally, people could actually contribute changes back.

I must confess that I was a bit confused at first with the
new httpup features (apart from proxy support ;-))
and the relation between the unmaintained collection.

I briefly re-read at the "Port reorganisation?" thread (jan 04)
and came up with the following comments / ideas:

- I'm not sure if it is a good idea to have a unmaintained
   collection at all, at least for me unmaintained ports
   are a last-resort-handle-with-care thing.

- I was thinking of httpup-ng more as a way of improving
   the quality of /contrib: if I trust an external contributor,
   and I think he has some valuable port,
   I'd prefer to maintain the port rather than throwing it into
   unmaintained. Same work for me, the contributor is awarded
   of having his port in contrib (what an honor :)), and,
   most important, I bet contrib ports are a lot more tested and
   it's easier to have a bug report filed for a maintained
   collection.

- Of course the above points don't necessarily collide:
   the new httpup can simplify syncronization operations
   for both collections as well, so good work!

Regards,
Simone

-- 
Simone Rota           WEB : http://www.varlock.com
Bergamo, Italy        MAIL: sip at varlock.com