Re: [opensuse-project] Some questions about openSUSE

[Gerald Pfeifer <gp@novell.com>]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> How do you integrate new contributors, before they reach the point where 
> you are confident about giving them write access to your repositories? 

There are several answers to that: One is "We don't have such a probation 
period", we give anyone who wants write access to the build service to 
create, build, maintain, and offer packages of their own right away.

Another one is that package maintainers take patches via Bugzilla or
other means (e-mail to the respective open mailing lists, direct mail,
upstream collaboration).  This is how many Novell employees (including
myself whose regular job doesn't include hacking) and our partners
actually contribute as well.

And yet another answer is that we are looking at ways in terms of 
processes and infrastructure to make this even easier.  As a package 
maintainer it would be really cool to look at a diff between my package 
and a variant thereof in the openSUSE Build Service and have a simple way 
of just approving a merge of the whole set of changes or a part thereof 
into mine.

> (we use a "sponsorship process" for that in Debian, where a non-Debian 
> Developer creates the package, and then find a DD willing to review it, 
> and upload it under its own responsibility).

That's similar to what we also do at FreeBSD.

> I'll try to ask questions about non-packaging work in the next set
> of questions. This is a very interesting aspect (and one where Debian
> isn't really good currently).

One thing Debian is good it, if I understood that correctly, is hooking 
the Debian bug tracking system into others (upstream) and also keeping
the bug tracking system in the loop of e-mail discussions.  Comparing
various approaches there is something I'd find interesting.  It is
definitely something where openSUSE has lots of room for improvement.

Gerald
-- 
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