Maintainer Responsibilities

[Darryl L. Pierce]

On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:01:58AM -0400, Steve Grubb wrote:
> Not if its closed. How would I be notified that the fix is in Fedora? If the bug 
> is severe enough, shouldn't the upstream commit be applied to Fedora's package 
> and the package pushed out for testing? Is all this going to happen if the bug 
> is closed?

I might be saying something most people understand or accept, but it
strikes me the flow should be:

1. User reports bug against Fedora component.
2. Maintainer reviews the BZ.
2a. If it's packaging related, then the bug's handled with an update.
3. A bug is opened upstream, and the BZ somehow references that ticket.
4a. The maintainer can also work on a fix and submit that patch
    upstream.
4b. The patch can be applied in Fedora in the interim to fix the
    problem.
5. When upstream releases a fixed version, then a new release is made in
   Fedora, and the patch discarded from CVS.

The point being, the Fedora user shouldn't have to go outside of Fedora
to report their bugs. IMO the package maintainer is the person who
should be liaison between the user and upstream and should be actively
aware and involved in those bug reports and fixes.

In steps 2-5 the maintainer's always a part of what's going on upstream.
They don't have to be actively involved in solving the bug, but they do
need to be aware of reported bugs by Fedora users, as well as bugs
reported by other distros so they can proactively alert Fedora users.

-- 
Darryl L. Pierce, Sr. Software Engineer @ Red Hat, Inc.
Virtual Machine Management - http://www.ovirt.org/
Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste ná Béarla cliste.
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