[See in-line below] On Sat, 2017-09-16 at 21:11 +0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm currently preparing the next release of groff (I still have to > commit a few changes in the build system but I'm not far from making a > candidate package). In order to upload a tarball (into alpha.gnu.org > and ftp.gnu.org) I mailed ftp-upl...@gnu.org so that they could give me > access to these ftp site, but apparently not being the official > maintainer is a problem, here is was they answered: > > "The currently listed maintainer for groff is Ted Harding > <ted.hard...@wlandres.net>. Only him or an uploader nominated by him > can have their key added to the ftp server. If he has stepped down as > a maintainer this needs to be resolved prior to requesting a new > uploader key to be added. Please discuss this within the project and > request any changes in the maintainers to maintain...@gnu.org. When > the new maintainer(s) are added to the files then they can request > their key to be added to the ftp, alternatively they can nominate > uploaders to have their keys added too."
My "maintainer" role (insofar as I possibly officially had one) has always been marginal, especially compared with Werber's. I think that the above reply may be either mistaken or out-of-date. Visiting the groff web=page at gnu.org https://www.gnu.org/software/groff shows: [A]: User issues lead: Ted Harding. [B]: Technical issues lead: Werner Lemberg. but does not state that either of us is a maintainer (in the GNU sense of the word). Further, the following paragraph is in the panel at top right: GNU troff is looking for a maintainer. If you’re interested, please take a look at this general information about GNU packages and being a GNU maintainer, and then email maintain...@gnu.org with a bit about your background and particular interest in this package. Thanks. I don't know who wrote this (maybe Werner), but it indicates that, in fact, groff lacks a maintainer! And I wonder where (I couldn't track it down on the above web-page) the groff maintainer[s] are/is listed. So my suggestion would be that someone who knows their way around the organisation of gnu.oeg (and I find it confusing!) should undertake the task of establishing a real maintainer. This might require someone to explicitly volunteer. Sorry to be unhelpful -- but I hope the above may be useful. I'm willing to try to do what I can to help this along. Best wishes to all, Ted. > > I can take in charge part of the job of the maintainer: the build > system, making release; I've also studied src/roff/troff source code and > I'm planning to propose changes in `troff' to support Knuth-Plass > paragraph formating algorithm (a long-term task and of course not for > the next release). But I'm not competent for questions/bugs on macro > packages (there are currently lots of open bugs and patch requests for > macro packages) and I can't be a technical lead like Werner, I could be > at most a "co-maintainer". > > So what should we do now? > > Regards, > > Bertrand Garrigues >