On 2025-08-14 16:23, Antoine Le Gonidec wrote:
Opening an MR without having contacted me *prior to the fact* is the
definition of a code dump. I do not care about code, I can very well
write it myself in the first place.
What I care about is people, especially people who want to fix or
improve a package I am working on. But if they refuse to communicate and
only want to interact by silently sending patches, we can not work
together.
If sending an e-mail is too much for them, well, too bad, they were not
all that interested in improving the package in the first place to stop
at such a trivial requirement.
Maybe we need some debian/contributing file to make the contribution
rules explictit? Or maybe this could be a pertinent (ab)use of
debian/README.source? At least that way people who can’t stand the
effort of sending an e-mail (or an IRC ping, or even a message on XMPP,
I don’t care about the channel) prior to any kind of code contribution
would know there is no use wasting their time on packages I maintain.
I'm trying to understand this, and I'm unfortunately very confused.
When I run in to a problem in Debian, I try to follow a rough pattern:
1. I identify a suspect package, and diagnose a cause.
2. I identify a solution.
3. I implement the solution, recompile, and confirm it solves the problem.
4. I submit the solution (either upstream or to Debian).
Part of step (4) involves writing prose that documents the investigation
and describes the patch.
If I am understanding this email correctly, it sounds to me like you
are saying that this is a "code dump" because I didn't email you first.
Am I understanding you correctly? I'm not interested in arguing about
your process, but I am very curious if there are other people that
disregard contributions because someone didn't send an email before
sending a second email with a patch/opening an MR.
This is very important to me because I have several open bug report
with patches that perhaps are being disregarded for this very reason,
and I'd like to understand how I can get people to look at them.
Would I need to close them and restart the whole process to get your
attention?
Best,
Antonio
