What about pulling changes from downstream ?

Posted Apr 10, 2008 15:00 UTC (Thu) by lacostej (guest, #2760)
In reply to: What about pulling changes from downstream ? by rworkman
Parent article: OpenSSH bug falls through the cracks

<em>If you were maintainer of a significant upstream package, you'd likely realize that it's
easier said than done.</em>

Because the tools are not in place. That's why I said "try".

I don't expect someone to be able to track all downstreams packages. One developer cannot
track all distributions especially because each distribution track changes in a different way.

But if people work together it should be possible to come up with a set of tools to help all
those upstreams maintainers.

One could then do something like:

list-patches ssh ubuntu 8.04

Most distributions work in the open. This information doesn't change overnight and could be
centralized on a server. Maybe distrowatch or something similar.

The tools would help both ways, as distributors would be able to also look at what other
distributors are doing.

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What about pulling changes from downstream ?

Posted Apr 11, 2008 0:22 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (1 responses)

I think it's less work for a downstream maintainer to send an email to the upstream maintainer than to maintain the patch in such a way that "pull" works. And looking at the total effort by everyone, I'm sure the email is considerably less work. But probably less reliable.

I sometimes get pointed to lists of downstream patches for packages I maintain. I find it very hard to glean defect information from them. One of the reasons is the open source tradition of not documenting beyond the code itself. It often takes quite a bit of effort to figure out what the point of a patch is. OTOH, when people email me patches, they almost always include a nice explanation.

What about pulling changes from downstream ?

Posted Apr 12, 2008 19:21 UTC (Sat) by boklm (guest, #34568) [Link]

It's not a lot of work to send an email, but it's easy to forget.