Taking over maintaining a package

2010-05-12 Thread danny . rodriguez
Hello all - 


Once i have permission to take over maintaining a package -- what do I do from 
there? 


-Danny 

Re: Taking over maintaining a package

2010-05-12 Thread Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
On Wednesday 12 May 2010 16:03:24 danny.rodrig...@comcast.net wrote:
 Once i have permission to take over maintaining a package -- what do I do
  from there?

Determine if the package is maintained in a VCS somewhere (probably alioth).

If so, get (an alioth account and) write permissions to the VCS.  Check out 
the latest version (HEAD) and also the last version uploaded to Sid.

If not, download the source package from Sid.

Subscribe to your package on the PTS.

Find upstream.  Introduce yourself on their communication medium of choice.  
See if any of the developers have feedback on the Debian package, especially 
if they use Debian but not your package.  Start following development or at 
least release schedules.

Does upstream have an new non-crashy version available?  (This need not be a 
release, but it shouldn't be the tip of their development tree.

If so, update the packaging to use upstream's new version.  Run it through 
lintian (from Sid preferably, but the version from backports is usually good 
enough) and piuparts.  For each complaint, either fix the packaging or be 
prepared to defend your decision not to.  Update the changelog not only with 
the upstream version bump, but also any changes you made to satisfy 
lintian/piuparts.

If not, you might not need to make a release right now.  Study the packaging, 
perhaps alter it so it can build packages directly from the upstream VCS, 
for possible uploads to experimental.

Check bugs.d.o for any issues.  If you can fix them, do so, and record it in 
the Changelog.  If they need to go upstream, forward them.  If you have the 
skills, get involved in fixing upstream bugs, too; particularly the ones 
coming from the Debian BTS.

Install the new package and become user 0.  Confirm the package is ready to 
be shared, with others and upload to mentors.  Fill out the template 
completely, send it over here and wait for a review.

Once you've got something in Sid, check your bugs again.  See if you can 
marked some as fixed in a particular version, or close some as invalid 
completely.  Consider preparing a package for stable-updates if you can fix 
bugs affecting stable the risk is low.  Consider preparing a package for 
backports.

...

Anything I missed, -mentors?
-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.   ,= ,-_-. =.
b...@iguanasuicide.net  ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
http://iguanasuicide.net/\_/


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Re: Taking over maintaining a package

2010-05-12 Thread Paul Wise
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 5:38 AM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
b...@iguanasuicide.net wrote:

snip excellent response

 Anything I missed, -mentors?

Check the PTS page and click all the links there, looking for issues.

If appropriate, check for a screenshot on screenshots.d.n and upload
one if there isn't one.

Audit the debtags on debtags.alioth.d.o and add/remove tags as appropriate.

Join the upstream development team.

Run 'whohas packagename' to find out which distributions have the
software in them. Then look at their bugs, patches and so on. For
Ubuntu you can just look at the PTS page links.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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