Re: Proposal for a team of admins

[Philip Nienhuis]

Julien Bect wrote:
> Le 10/01/2017 à 15:21, Julien Bect a écrit :
> > Le 10/01/2017 à 14:58, Julien Bect a écrit :
> > > I am co-maintainer of the (externally hosted !) *stk* package, and
> > > (more or less implicitely) the maintainer of the *generate_html* and
> > > *gsl* packages.
> > >
> > > I vote for _option 2.1_.
> > >
> > > OF is already, and should remain IMHO, a mix of self- and externally
> > > hosted packages (with a set of rules to maintain coordination of the
> > > OF package ecosystem as a whole).
> > >
> > > More on this in a separate thread.
> >
> > I take this opportunity to propose myself as one member of an "admin
> > team" that would continue and expand the work that was done by Carnë.
> >
> > I give below some details about my view of OF, and especially the
> > "controversial" (quoting Olaf) issue of externally-hosted packages.
> > [....]
>
>
> I will continue here a discussion started with Philip on the other
> (voting) thread:
>
> > Julien Bect-2 wrote
> > > Le 10/01/2017 à 23:31, PhilipNienhuis a écrit :
> > > > I have a very slight (55 % vs 45 %) preference for 2.2, because of
> > > > the extra work involved with 2.1. However if that extra work can be
> > > > shifted towards the maintainers of those independent packages I
> > > > think 2.1 my preference will change into 2.1.
> > > Hi Philip, Can you explain what this extra work is, exactly ?
> >
> > Not exactly, but I'm thinking of e.g., maintaining the infrastructure
> > on octave.sf.net and in Octave itself (pkg -forge) needed for those
> > external packages, keeping repos sync'ed, that sort of things. All of
> > it depending on how exactly "external packages" can be integrated with
> > Octave-Forge and core Octave.
>
> The way I see it there is not much additional work for OF admins:
>
> * When the EHP [1] is created, we have of course to create its OF-repo
> by cloning its main repo.  But for other packages, we also have to
> create an OF-repo [-> no additional work].
>
> * Keeping repo sync'ed is, in my mind, entirely of the package
> maintainer's responsibility [-> no additional work].

So, that extra work is not for the OF leader / team. Good

> * Checking that repos are sync'ed when making a release.  The way I see
> it, this is done by checking that the release tarball can be reproduced

... and installed and tested successfully on all OS-es it is supported 
on ...

> from source (on the OF repo).  This is easily scriptable and, if the
> test fails, it is the responsibility of the package maintainer to make
> things right.  Moreover, I think that this must be done for OFHP [2] as
> well: even an experienced OF maintainer can sometimes forget to push
> some changes ;-) [-> no additional work].

Yes that has happened repeatedly.

> [1] Externally Hosted Package... we're discussing some much these days,
> I thought that a shortcut might come in handy.
>
> [2] OctaveForge Hosted Packages

Well in that case, as I've explained, my preference goes to 2.1.

I suppose we're all happy with 2.1 then :-)

philip