> you should look at > the archives to see what people decided. from reading the archives and the response so far as well as the current documentation on the subject i conclude that the issue is still not clear and people make up their own stuff as they go along.
the following may be a formalisation of current (best) practices:
- maintainers fall into three categories. herds, gentoo developers and
non-gentoo proxy maintainers.
- a herd is defined in herds.xml. exception: no-herd. no-herd is limited
to the situation where no suitable herd can be found.
- a gentoo developer is defined in dev-rel/roll-call/userinfo.xml.
- every ebuild has a herd.
- a package can belong to more than one herd.
- a package can be maintened by no or more parties.
- a package with herd different from 'no-herd' is said to be maintained
by the members of that herd.
- all maintainers different from herds state their maintainership using
the <maintainer> tag. the <maintainer> tag requires the <email> tag.
- a package with herd 'no-herd' and no additional maintainers is said to
be unmaintained.
- a <maintainer> of [EMAIL PROTECTED] indicates no maintainership and
is only allowed as the sole maintainer. meaning a single <maintainer>
tag and a single <herd>no-herd</herd> tag. infact it is semantically
equivalent to a single <herd>no-herd</herd> tag and no additional
maintainers.
- a package that is proxy maintained needs an additional gentoo
association in form of a maintaining herd or gentoo developer.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] may be such an association, but only if the
original one disappeared.
optionally one may want to include, although personally i prefer to state
it explicitly:
- a missing or empty <herd> tag is equivalent to <herd>no-herd</herd>
open questions:
- what does it mean when the package is maintained by a herd and an
additional maintainer? how does one determine the order in which to
contact multiple maintainers?
- are there situations in which we specify a <herd> other than no-herd
but don't want its members to act as maintainers?
...
what are your current best practices regarding metadata?
regards
Thilo
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