Re: binary packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 11:32:31AM -0500, Paul Kienzle wrote:
> On Feb 15, 2004, at 9:25 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> >Now, while we're at the topic of wishlists, I would like someone else 
> >to
> >join Debian and share the maintainership with me. I have put enough 
> >work in
> >over the years to not drop this like a hot potato into the lap of a 
> >random
> >Debian developer, so I'll wait some more.
> >
> >But the fact is that I have stopped to use Octave on a regular basis, 
> >and
> >that is not a good basis for excellence in package maintenance.  And 
> >that
> >really is what we're shooting for here.
> >
> >Interested parties for this sub-task should feel free to mail me on- or
> >off-list.
> 
> Can you give us some idea of how much time it takes to
> keep up with octave/octave-forge releases and bug reports

Not that much, really, as both JWE and you do a terrific job actually
finding and hunting bugs. To that extend I really am just a mediator. I have
not had a need for re-designing the package building parts, so the overall
time spent per week is not so bad.

[ Off-topic: For me the bigger problem is more than my total package count
is approaching 60, so cutting it every now and then by five or six does
help. I do cull packages that become too much trouble relatively to how much
I care about them coupled with the probability of finding an interested and
clueful replacement (which is why I dropped a2ps, which is unfortunately in
some limbo now). ]

> from the Debian community?   I expect setting them up in the
> first place took a while, but I want to know how much long
> term commitment we need to keep binary packages up to
> date.

I suspect that it would be very clearly dominated by what you are doing as
an upstream maintainer for octave-forge.  The hardest part may be the
upstart cost -- learning Debian's tools and their use etc pp. But then that
is set up and has been working fine.  The potential for synergy is large,
though. You would be the best candidate, bar now, but I know that you also
may be overexposed due to some other commitments.

Dirk


-- 
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                                             -- From the pac(8) manual page



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