On 06/03/2025 04:54, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
Finally, a question -- as you don't seem to document the issues you have
with long term packages in their ITP bug, where *do* you document them?
There is no built-in issue tracking in `dak`. The "notes" function is
only available while the package is in NEW. They must be removed before
a package is ACCEPTed or REJECTed.
The sole documentation is in the FTP team members' and maintainer's
email inboxes. There is no functionality to notify a processing FTP team
member when a package is reuploaded. There is no indication in `dak
process-new` that a package has been previously uploaded or a systematic
way to check to make sure such feedback is addressed.
We discard the source tarballs and changes files on REJECT so there is
nothing to `debdiff`. This partially happens for legal reasons: if we
determine a package is not suitable for the archive then we may no
longer have the legal right to retain it on ftp-master.
Unless one reads all FTP team mail, unless a maintainer CCes you on a
"thanks, reuploaded" mail you are liable to miss such a fact.
The rationale given when I joined as ftpassistant (c. 2012) for not
publicising decisions e.g. in the ITP was to avoid publishing
potentially harshly-worded and embarassing reviews to maintainers in
public (like pointing out that you missed a fairly obvious license
declaration, incompatibility, or packaging step).
I am welcome to feedback from the project as to whether this outweighs
the benefit to having past decisions available for public consultation.
As Bradley Kuhn mentioned in his DebConf16 talk "The Supreme Court of
DFSG-Free?"[1], with rare exception ftpteam does not publish "advisory
opinions" nor is there a way to reason about whether a package meets the
DFSG other than to observe whether it is present in the archive. To me
the status quo seems sub-optimal for a variety of reasons.
For a further peak behind the ftpmaster curtain I recommend my DebConf24
talk "Meet the ftpteam" which has a walkthrough of the (quite
old-school, "two SSH sessions and tmux") process of NEW package review.
(video[2], etherpad[3])
There's certainly space for better tooling.
Cheers,
Luke Faraone
[1]: https://debconf16.debconf.org/talks/38/
[2]: https://debconf24.debconf.org/talks/154-meet-the-ftpteam/
[3]:
https://salsa.debian.org/debconf-team/public/data/dc24/-/blob/main/etherpad/txt/154-meet-the-ftpteam.txt
