On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Ian Stakenvicius <a...@gentoo.org> wrote: > .. For certain things, I think it would be very beneficial for this > to be true (other dev's welcome to touch) across the tree. Maybe if > there is enough general support for it, we should change our default > of "never touch a maintainer's package without permission of the > maintainer/herd", to "OK to touch unless package metadata explicitly > requests not to" ...? And we can put a tag in the metadata to > indicate this (or even to indicate what other dev's can and can't > touch -- ie, can touch *DEPEND, can bump EAPI, cannot add features, > cannot bump)?
Honestly, I like the maintainer/herd system - it promotes some kind of consistency and accountability. If everybody just goes poking at random ebuilds anytime they want to then that will tend to lead to chaos. Why not just do everything BUT commit the ebuild, and then just attach the fixed ebuild to the bug instead? That really isn't any more work for those doing the work, it allows users affected by the bug to download the fixed ebuild instantly if they want to, and it still allows the maintainer to be a quality gateway. Even making it voluntary for maintainers to invite help creates some risk that users will be subjected to uncoordinated updates/etc. If you want to avoid that, then the checklist for changing random packages will likely grow so large that nobody will do it anyway. If you know a lot of about a package or a group of packages, just add yourself as a maintainer... Rich
