Hello Otto,

On 26/01/2025 07:15, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:
> What comes to DEP-14 and timelines, do you agree that debian/sid > predated 
> the 2020 version of DEP-14 and the two options it now >
recommends are debian/latest and is some situations debian/unstable?
That is correct, and I didn't get this subtlety when I wrote my previous
email, my mistake. After careful re-reading, DEP-14 says: "for the
development branches we recommend the <vendor>/<suite> scheme over
<vendor>/<codename>".

In other words, DEP-14 recommends <vendor>/unstable over <vendor>/sid,
and yes it's a change from 2020.

> I am merely raising discussion that since the Go team guide > originally 
> referred to DEP-14, it might be time to update it to >
match new version.
That also seems correct to me. If Go team wants to adhere strictly to
DEP-14, it should update its default branch name. Otherwise the team
should update the wording, and clarify that it adheres to DEP-14 with
some exceptions, eg. keep using debian/sid for the branch name, if that
makes more sense.


> I took checked quickly the packages you most recently contributed to > 
> (rebuildd, dput-ng, fierce, schroot, cadaver, wafwoof) they all seem >
to use either 'master' or 'debian/master' as the branch. Based on a >
small and possibly skewed sample you aren't using 'debian/sid' > outside
of the Go team.
I mostly contribute to existing packages, so the packaging branch
already exists, I don't decide how it's named.


> What would you then think of a policy that people can choose what > branch 
> name they want to use, as long as the git HEAD is maintained >
to always point to the Debian branch? There was several comments >
regarding the team policy discussion stating general distrust > towards
having policies. Could an option here be to update the Go > team policy
to say that a package can use any branch name in DEP-14?
At this point I must mention that I'm a very minor contributor in Go
team. I'm not the ideal person to discuss that. But my impression is
that *changing* the branch name to anything else is a divisive topic.
Changing to debian/sid back in 2018 was divisive and created some
tensions, as you can see at
https://lists.debian.org/debian-go/2018/09/threads.html. Maybe people
don't want to go through that again?


> I have been raising ideas on the mailing list for discussion, > provided 
> examples, promised to do my part in the implementation, >
listened and responded to all who shared their views etc. > > On Dec 8th
I specifically raised on the mailing list the question on > how
decisions in the Go team work and got advice (thanks Nilesh) on > who
are the stakeholders (https://lists.debian.org/debian- > go/2024/12/
msg00030.html). Unfortunately none of them have replied > to any emails.
Maybe there's a slight misunderstanding here, on this thread Nilesh gave
you the names of the people who "have been managing the CI thus far".
But there was no answer to "who are the decision makers in the Go team".
I don't think there's such a formal group of persons, but I try to
answer that below.


> I have sent several emails to Anthony Fok who seems to have been the > main 
> maintainer for the team tools in past years, but unfortunately >
he hasn't responded either. If people are missing then the remaining >
volunteers need to try do their part, and I have diligently done. > > I
have waited a long time, just like is best practice in Debian. > Some of
the comments of "only in software companies" don't feel > correct here.
The Go team already has a policy, and it was to my > knowledge a
volunteer team when the policy was made Updating it > every 5 years is
fully feasible for a volunteer group like us and > not something only
software companies can do. > > I published the proposal or the proposal
as an MR, and revised it > based on feedback in both the MR and on the
mailing list. Putting > out the proposal now was a perfectly fair and
proper course of > action to get more visibility and solicit more feedback.
I'm subscribed to debian-go mailing list, I've seen that you started
several discussions. Indeed you've done a great job with that, no problem.

Now, you just joined the team 3 months ago, so I suppose that when you
propose to change how the team works, you're looking for feedback from
"core contributors" in the team, either the most experienced or the most
active at the moment, or both. It's not clear who they are so far, so I
checked on UDD. I looked for uploads made by the maintainer
'team+pkg...@tracker.debian.org', for the year 2024, and I came up with
the following top-10 uploaders:

     51 Francisco Vilmar Cardoso Ruviaro
     57 Guillem Jover
     59 Maytham Alsudany
     79 Shengjing Zhu
    111 Martin Dosch
    120 Simon Josefsson
    150 Daniel Swarbrick
    179 Anthony Fok
    324 Mathias Gibbens
    325 Reinhard Tartler

That's a total of 1,455 uploads for this top-10 uploaders, ie. 75% of
the grand total of 1,933 uploads, for the year 2024.

If we agree on this definition of "core contributors", and if we look
back on the threads you started [1][2][3], I see that only 3 of them
participated in the discussion. Reinhard answered only once (and wasn't
in favor of changing the branch name), while Simon and Maytham
contributed actively to the discussions. Then you opened the MR [4], and
only Maytham (from the top-10) participated.

That's far from a team-wide consensus. IMO there need to be more
feedback from this top-10 (or top-20 or more), and ideally someone steps
up and merges the MR in the name of the team.

I think it just takes more time than you'd like, and I don't have the
solution to get people to participate either.

Again, thanks for all the work you've put into that, and I hope that
positive changes come out of it.

Best,

Arnaud

----

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-go/2024/12/msg00021.html

[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-go/2025/01/msg00005.html

[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-go/2025/01/msg00045.html

[4]
https://salsa.debian.org/go-team/go-team.pages.debian.net/-/merge_requests/7


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