On Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 08:31:09AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
The most common (not the only) reason why packages file an RFH bug, in my
experience, is that they are overwhelmed and unable to keep up with the
packaging, which unfortunately is the same state that will lead them to
not responed to MRs. Unfortunately, often the ideal response to an RFH bug
is for an experienced Debian maintainer who wouldn't require much
assistance to offer to be co-maintainer directly. It's hard for a newcomer
to offer that type of help, through absolutely no fault of the newcomer.
Often RFH bugs are not filed until the situation is already dire and the
existing maintainers may not be able to mentor newcomers or perform a
clean handoff to anyone other than an experienced Debian developer. This
is very much not ideal, and I wish this were not the case, but I suspect
that means that, at the moment, RFH is more useful as a flag for
experienced developers, and newcomers will find it easier to contribute to
packages that, paradoxically, are not tagged as needing help.
Amen to that. Maybe we should not direct newcomers to wnpp but instead
to a list of wishlist bugs tagged help (for newbies), and optionally to
a list of RC bugs tagged help (with the warning "not for the faint of
the heart").
Greetings
Marc
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