On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 07:53:31AM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 7:33 AM, Pacho Ramos <pa...@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > > Personally I would vote for simply have a <maintainer> tag pointing to > > the alias but we would still need to keep a list of real maintainers for > > that alias as usually not all people listed in the alias are willing to > > maintain the packages. > > > > I think the solution to this is that maintainers can be either: > 1. Devs - identified by their email address. (simple enough) > or > 2. Projects - identified by their email alias. > or > 3. A proxy maintainer identified by email address (in which case > either a dev or project must also be listed, potentially including the > proxy maintainer project). > > A project must have: > 1. A mail alias. Anybody can monitor if the project is OK with it, > but it isn't the definitive member list. > 2. A project page on the wiki with a member list. This is the > definitive list of who is a member. > 3. An annually-elected lead. > > The lead should clean up the member list from time to time. An > inactive project should be treated the same as an inactive dev as far > as maintainership goes - target for cleanup. Special projects like > archs/infra/comrel/etc should probably be escalated to council if they > appear dead. > > Herds are just collections of packages - a package being in a herd > says nothing about whether it is maintained, just as a package being > in a category says nothing about it being maintained. >
Thanks for that lucid explanation. It's clear the metadata is useful, for keeping track of apps cross-tree, but it's being confused with a project, as you outlined in your other mail. Perhaps this is because people are considered members of herds, when really they should just be on the mail alias. Additionally, herd metadata should be seen as *strictly* about cross-tree categorisation, and cleaned up on that basis (whether there are still any packages, or the grouping is still relevant), reviewed by tree-cleaners. (If they're not already; idk your procedures, ofc.) I think the confusion is understandable though, as people are constantly checking who's on the alias for a herd with willikins. That leads to the conception that a herd is a group of devs/proxy, not a group of packages. It's hard to shake when you're constantly looking up a group of devs based on !herd[1], or reading it (with the list of _people_) in channel after channel. It would be better if people were checking projects, from what you wrote above. I would recommend reworking that to !project, with !herd supplying a link to the listing of _packages_ belonging to the herd on the website, instead. Since as you say, a herd is a group of packages, whereas a project is a group of developers. Either that, or give up and let a herd of cats, be a herd of cats ;) Regards, steveL [1] eg: /msg willikins herd kde -- #friendly-coders -- We're friendly, but we're not /that/ friendly ;-)
