Hi! ... > One fundamental thing is that you may not be welcomed simply because > there is nobody there welcoming you. Adding a merge request for a fix > may be pointless, because nobody will merge it. Reviewing is a certain > effort and nobody has time for that. .. > My experience does however also include other things that worked. I did > a successful package salvation for libsml and I did a successful RFS > for vzlogger.
Thanks for contributing to Debian! When contributing to Debian packages it is important to grasp that each package is kind of a mini-project by itself, and how new contributors are welcomed, or how active the package maintenance is in general, fully depends on who is the individual maintainer or maintainer team. As you can see, over 20 people responded to your email here in an encouraging tone but none of those who responded so far actually helped review or merge your submission, as the maintenance of this specific package (apache2) relies mostly on two specific people and not just any Debian Developer in general. I suggest you continue to contribute to Debian packages (as you already have) and focus your efforts on the packages where your submissions are reviewed and contributions get better treatment. Personally I often start contributing to a Debian package (or any open source project in general) by submitting a typofix or something small just so see if the project is receptive to contributions, and invest time in more extensive contributions only if the initial contribution experience was good. In some rare cases the package maintainers express elitistic behaviour and dismiss contributions as "a nuisance". If you run into this, then just stop contributing. Most of the time however the contribution simply gets ignored because the maintainer is busy. Many maintainers in Debian are responsible for tens of packages and easily overcommit. Lack of maintainer time is likely the reason why your https://salsa.debian.org/apache-team/apache2/-/merge_requests/43 went 8 months without a response. Some people in this thread suggested contacting the maintainer via bug report email, but I don't think you did anything wrong. If the maintainer does not have time to look at open MRs in 8 months, the fundamental challenge is likely a social or economical issue of not having time to maintain the package properly along with all it entails. To get this specific MR going, added my review as a comment and pinged the maintainer, who merged it. The person who originally filed the issue https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972695 didn't add any review to your MR, but you should note that he did see it and added a comment to the bug report. Hopefully you can follow up with the logrotate snippet. Feel free to request a review from me if the maintainer is too busy to review your next MR. - Otto
