Skip to main content

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [List Home]
[epp-dev] giving EPP package maintainers committer status on EPP

Hi package maintainers,

another idea that I discussed with some people at EclipseCon...

From the package maintainers there are complaints such as 'you
[Markus...] forgot to apply this patch', or 'why can I not change this
small thing myself'. The reason is very simple: You are not a
committer on the EPP project.

<history>
In the early days of EPP this wasn't an issue at all. Years ago, that
means long before p2, there was a single XML file that contained the
package definition. And these XML files were spread on several places
within the eclipse.org CVS. Before every release this caused problems
because I had to create patches and I had to ask the package
maintainers to apply these patches. Especially in the days or on the
weekend before a release this was too time consuming.
When we moved to the p2 director and to the feature+plugin package
definition, I decided that everything has to stay in the EPP CVS and
the package maintainers send their changes in via Bugzilla. As we all
know this is not the best solution, but at least I am able to make
some necessary last minute changes and can try to keep the packages
consistent.
</history>

My proposal is now that we introduce an EPP committer-ship for a
package maintainer in a way very similar to Orbit.

Prerequisite one: The new package maintainer is already committer on
another project that contributes to this package and it sounds
plausible that (s)he will be maintaining the package in the future.

Prerequisite two: The package is more important than the committer...
what I mean with this is that it must be easy to replace an existing
package maintainer / committer by another, new package maintainer.
Sometimes assignments change and it is important to give someone else
the chance to take over the package.

I will go on doing changes for all packages in the future and will try
to fix build errors, but I am sure that you don't need me for the many
small changes, version updates, dependency updates, etc.

First of all I'd like to get your opinion. If there are not too many
protests I will start the new committer process for the existing
package maintainers soon.

Regards, Markus


Back to the top