On Sun, Sep 02, 2001 at 07:55:43PM +0200, Martin Michlmayr wrote: > During the base freeze preparations in the last few weeks, a problem > Debian has always had became apparent again. Since Debian is a > distributed, volunteer run project it is hard to tell whether a maintainer > is doing Debian work at the moment. In the freeze, it is often crucial to > get a bug fixed within a very short period of time. If the maintainer > doesn't respond to e-mail immediately, you can either wait or make an NMU. > The former is problematic since it might delay the freeze and the latter > might break the package, which in turn would cause a delay (Of course NMUs > don't always break the package but the likelihood of breaking a package is > higher if you don't know the package well). A feature has recently been > implemented in dpkg/katie which could solve this problem (along with a > couple of others) if deployed properly. > > In Debian, a package usually has one maintainer. When someone other than > the maintainer makes a source upload, katie recognizes the upload as an > NMU and tags the bugs as fixed instead of closing them. Since some > packages have multiple maintainers, an Uploaders field (in debian/control) > has been introduced in dpkg 1.9.13 (see #101815) -- katie now also checks > this field in order to determine if the upload is an NMU. > > What I'm basically proposing is that it would be nice if packages had a > backup maintainer or two listed in the Uploaders field. The maintainer > could ask someone with whom he works together well and whom he trusts if > he wants to co-maintain the package. The maintainer would still act as > the package's official maintainer, but the other one can act as a backup > when the main maintainer is busy or on vacation. > > I think we should try to implement that scheme at least for packages in > base and standard... but why not go ahead and try to do it for all > packages?
Seconded. -- Eric VAN BUGGENHAUT "Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards!" --from a /. post \_|_/ Andago \/ \/ Av. Santa Engracia, 54 a n d a g o |-- E-28010 Madrid - tfno:+34(91)2041100 /\___/\ http://www.andago.com / | \ "Innovando en Internet" [EMAIL PROTECTED]