On Sat, Jun 07, 2025 at 03:46:48PM +0000, Tim Woodall wrote:
Maintaining a package is a significant commitment. I'd prefer newcomers to fix bugs instead. There it doesnt hurt when they vanish after a few months.And, when you "just" fix bugs, you don't have to the next frustrating threadmill that we offer: looking for a sponsor.Although just fixing bugs has its own frustrations.I mostly used to write "works for me" fixes and now I look to submitting to upstream first and go to the BTS if I can't quickly see how to open a bug/MR upstream.
Good, sending patches for upstream bugs upstream is always encouraged by Debian.
There's a patch for apt-cacher-ng for a multi-year old bug that I know is in use in at least three large deployments due to private emails. The patch could do with some TLC, the comments in particular reflect my journey of understanding rather than the final state, and had I got prompt feedback I'd have done that work but a year plus later I'd have to spend time reminding myself just what was going on - at this point anyone is as well placed as me to do that cleanup - and I'm not sure I'd bother, if there's ever a new release I'll get an alert and if there isn't well "it works for me".
apt-cacher-ng is simply almost dead upstream/unmaintained, having just one release/maintainer upload since 2021 and many open bugs, including several very well known problems affecting many people.
A while back I fixed a number of FTBFS and usr-merge bugs in packages I care about. Those were merged, but as NMU which I found out by accident when I went looking at what was going on months later. TBH I was thinking "why bother?" although actually it should have been a positive experience.
Not sure if this describes some problem or not.
spending hours reading documentation on how to do this officially would feel annoying when I already have a working and deployed package locally.
Makes sense. -- WBR, wRAR
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