Jon Dowland wrote: > That was Joey's hypothetical, iirc, and I don't really agree with his > supposition that initial packaging is such quick work that the ITP > delay is significant.
The typical package is fairly trivial to create. Often the rules file doesn't need modifications anymore, so unless a man page has to be written (which can be put off anyway), the control and copyright file are probably what takes the longest. But, writing an ITP requires looking up most of the control file data, and requires researching the copyright too. For that matter, I'll bet that many developers do some basic compiling and running of the program before sending off the ITP -- why ITP something that you've never used? So the package can easily be half way complete before the ITP is sent. Running reportbug WNPP, filtering the existing reports to find a duplicate, and filling in basic data with cut-n-paste takes two or three minutes. Add the several minutes it takes to get a number back, add the interrupt needed to go check mail and get the bug, avoid getting dragged into some thread on debian-devel while doing it, and you've spent 10 minutes on the ITP if you're lucky, and I would guess, more likely half an hour. The best way to become "hyper-efficient" is to avoid this kind of overhead, automate everything, and be prepared to fail quickly and iterate. -- see shy jo
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
