Moving the discussion to -dev per leios request. On Wed, 21 May 2008 23:42:19 +0200 Marius Mauch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As this topic jus came up in #-dev, and most people there seemed to > agree with me I thought it might be worth to bring this topic up > again. The topic is that I think that the whole 'herd' concept we're > using is a huge mess and should be removed. Now before eveyone starts > screaming, lets look at what this concept actually is, as many people > are quite confused by it: > > 1) a herd is a group of packages (not a group of people) > 2) the herds.xml file is used to assign people and mail aliases as > maintainers of a given herd. Unfortuntely the syntax there give > the impression that those people/mail aliases actually form the herd > 3) the <herd> tag in metadata.xml is used to assign a package to a > certain group. > 4) the <maintainer> tag in metadata.xml can be used to assign > individual maintainers for a package in addition to/instead of the > herd maintainers > 5) the combination of 2), 3) and 4) is used to determine the > maintainers of a given package > > Now most people will be familiar with 5) to some degree, and that is > actually the only valid use case for the herd concept that I'm aware > of. Or has anyone some use case where you'd like to know what herd a > package belongs to, but don't care about by whom that herd is > maintained? > If we can agree that this is the only real use case for the herd > concept, then I think the concept is quite useless as it's just a > redundant layer of indirection. You could just list mail aliases > directly as maintainers, without having to consult herds.xml first. > > This would have a number of benefits: > - you no longer have to look at herds.xml to determine the actual > maintainers of a given package (as herd-name and associated mail alias > don't always match) > - it would simplify bug assignment rules, as the current case where a > package has both a <herd> and a <maintainer> tag in metadata.xml no > longer exists > - eliminate confusion about what a herd actually is > - only have one location where members of a given team are listed, > currently it's possible and quite likely that herds.xml and the mail > alias files get out of sync > - as others said in #-dev: it makes sense ;) > > Now there of course are a few things to consider: > - obviously, some tools, docs and processes would have to be updated, > but that's always the case with changes > - someone said that it might no longer be obvious if a package is > maintained by an individual or a group of people. But is that really > necessary? And it's not even obvious now, as some herds are maintained > by a single person. > - when I brought this up several months ago it was mentioned that > sometimes people want to be on the mail alias of a herd, but don't > want to be listed as members (and therefore be responsible). But that > can likely be just implemented by some kind of blacklist in the > relevant tools instead of using this whole indirection layer all the > time. > > So, what do you think? Is there some benefit in keeping this concept, > or can we live without it and make life simpler for everyone? > > Marius > > -- > Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub > > In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be > Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better. -- Public Key at http://www.genone.de/info/gpg-key.pub In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be Light.' And there was still nothing, but you could see a bit better.
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