Packager = Programmer?

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On 06/04/2009 04:56 AM, Bryan Kearney wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> On 06/04/2009 01:13 PM, Frank Murphy (Frankly3d) wrote:
>>> Does trying to become a packager.
>>> Involve being currently a Developer,
>>> as in Programming skills\certification,
>>> whether Perl\Python\c++ etc.
>>
>> Not necessarily. It's useful to understand the codebase but if you have
>> a active upstream responsive to bug reports, you can just take care of
>> the packaging aspects of it. You can always ask for help from others
>> within Fedora or upstream if needed.
>>
>> Rahul
>>
> I would content you need an ability to understand scripting languages
> (as spec files are really a DSL/scripting language) and an understanding
> of skills commonly associated with a developer:
> 
> - Source Code Control
> - Source Layout
> - Software Component Types (e.g. scripts, libraries, documents, etc).
> 
> however, as Rahul said, the ability to crank out the latest
> oCaml/Erlang/Java/C/Assembler/NameYourPoison is not required.
> 
Going even further, understanding diff and patch and tools used to build
software (make/autotools/CMake/ant/maven/distutils/etc) work is probably
of more importance to a packager than being able to program in
C/Python/Java/etc.  Knowing the basics of programming will help you
tremendously but there's other people upstream and within Fedora that
can do that work for you if it becomes necessary.  Knowing the basics of
the build tools your package uses are needed for even the most trivial
deviations from what upstream provides (and in some cases, you may
understand this aspect of programming better than upstream).

-Toshio

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