Modules and Maintainers

[Matt Rogers]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2007 at 09:17:36AM -0500, Allen Winter wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 December 2007 06:20:19 Sebastian Kuegler wrote:
> > On Wednesday 12 December 2007 22:04:20 Allen Winter wrote:
> > > For 4.x, where x >=1, I think we need to require maintainers for all our
> > > modules.
> > 
> > While having a maintainer for a module or an application, I don't think it's 
> > realistic to *require* modules that have no maintainer. What would we do with 
> > modules that don't have a maintainer? We cannot simply remove those ... 
> > 
> We can 
>   1) move active apps into another module with a maintainer
>   2) move active apps into extra gear
>   3) remove inactive apps
> 
> > On the other hand, having a maintainer doesn't guarantee that everything is 
> > peachy.
> There are no guarantees.
> 
> > I'm all for trying to sucker people into becoming maintainer, or at 
> > least show more responsibility towards the release process, but it's nothing 
> > we can put in terms of 'hard requirements'.
> >
> I consider this part of our maturing process.
> At this point we are getting too large and too diverse.
> 
> > 
> > > And, I think we need to consider consolidating some modules out of
> > > existence. We might consider merging kdeutils, kdeaccessibility and kdetoys
> > > for example back into the larger modules or into extragear.
> > 
> > Having bigger modules on the one hand decreases the amount of coordination, 
> > but it can also make it harder to find someone to act as module maintainer.
> > 
> True.  But it also helps build a community, encourages more code-reuse,
> and all that good stuff.
> 
> > > If we had a kdesdk maintainer this person would have been more aware
> > > of the kompare issue and hopefully would have handled it better than I.
> > 
> > Yup, having maintainers, or at least people that feel responsible for a 
> > certain part is something that helps the release-team making quality 
> > releases.
> > 
> > > And there are still apps that haven't been ported, with their code laying
> > > around in trunk.  We should have a list of each application with its
> > > maintainer.
> > 
> > It'd be interesting how many more of those 'borderline' apps we have lying 
> > around, I didn't really keep track of that ...
> > 
> > > Anyway... something to think about for the near future.
> > 
> > Yes, thanks for bringing it up. As a first step, we should communicate clearly 
> > those 'orphaned' modules, and maybe point at people we deem good candidates 
> > for maintainership.
> 
> Yes.  kdesdk is tops on my list of modules in need of a maintainer.
> 

Consider it maintained by me then, please. I'm supposed to already be
maintaining cervisia, and I can go ahead and take responsibility for the
module as a whole.

--
Matt