From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Leo Famulari Subject: Re: proposal: add "packagers" field (list of strings (names)) to package definition Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2015 12:35:18 -0500 Message-ID: <20151201173518.GA18163@jasmine> References: <565D565C.4030208@gmx.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:46604) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a3opp-00066x-3S for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:35:26 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a3opl-00050D-TL for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:35:25 -0500 Received: from out4-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.28]:32983) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1a3opl-000505-QQ for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 01 Dec 2015 12:35:21 -0500 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <565D565C.4030208@gmx.net> List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Florian Paul Schmidt Cc: guix-devel On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 09:12:12AM +0100, Florian Paul Schmidt wrote: > ...and encourage its use. The intended semantics is to list people > that have contributed to the packaging effort. The motivation behind > this proposal is that in many free software projects attribution can > be a major source of motivation to get people involved. Having the > packagers be first class citizens in the package definitions (as > opposed to the information being only implicitly available through > e.g. "git blame") would allow things like "guix package" or the > package list on the website to display the contributor's names. All the contributors do get attribution in the copyright notice at the top of each file, although that information is not linked to their actual contributions except through git. > And if in a standard format containing additional info like an email > address then bug reports for a package might even get CC'ed > automatically to the contributors (though this might have some privacy > implications - but providing an email address or even any entry in the > packagers field is purely opt-in). I like the idea of using this information programatically. > WDYT? The nice thing about `git blame` is that it's "never wrong" — you can easily find out who is actually invested in the relevant code based on their actions, rather than what they claimed when putting their name in the "maintainer" or "packager" field. That is, `git blame` shows revealed preferences while the "maintainer" field shows rhetorical preferences. Maybe `git blame` gets stale, but you can judge freshness based on the age of the commits. Plus I can see some "political" issues in the future where people lay claim to parts of the code base and justify it based on their name being in the packager field. Personally, I think we should avoid creating these sorts of bureaucracies if its not necessary. I noticed that the NixOS github has a "mention-bot" that automatically contacts people based on `git blame` if their old code is subject to a pull request. You can see it in action here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/11329 I think we should let the git repository be the single source of truth for figuring out who is responsible for the code. If necessary, we can build some automation around the git repo. Thoughts?