2007/10/16, Mateusz Jedrasik :

Hi,

I think it should be/would be nice if pacman could show who is the current maintainer of a particular package.

It would make it a lot easier to contact them in case something is broken, not updated, or so.

Currently one has to go to the lenghts of seeing cvsweb, downloading PKGBUILD, and searching for the maintainer in there, often (sometimes at least) ones who are no longer active.

Absolutely wrong. # Maintainer comments in PKGBUILDs are often outdated. And when package change maintainership they are not changed anyway, until next package rebuild which often doesn't happen soon. The most correct way to know who's maintainer is package list on our website. -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)

On 10/16/07, Dan McGee wrote:

On 10/16/07, Mateusz Jedrasik wrote:

...

Hi,

I think it should be/would be nice if pacman could show who is the current maintainer of a particular package.

It would make it a lot easier to contact them in case something is broken, not updated, or so.

Currently one has to go to the lenghts of seeing cvsweb, downloading PKGBUILD, and searching for the maintainer in there, often (sometimes at least) ones who are no longer active.

Cheers

I feel like this is a bit of feature-creep if we were to do this, and a bit too tied to the way Arch Linux uses pacman.

Better suggestion - add a namcap rule that yells if the PACKAGER isn't set for a package, then we have all that stuff already in place.

On 10/16/07, Dan McGee wrote:

On 10/16/07, Aaron Griffin wrote:

...

Better suggestion - add a namcap rule that yells if the PACKAGER isn't set for a package, then we have all that stuff already in place.

Wow, I completely forgot about the packager field already there. Good call.

IMO, this still isn't sufficient. Often devs update someone else's package (and don't change their PACKAGER line). For example: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/search/?q=sonata vs. http://cvs.archlinux.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/multimedia/sonata/?cvsroot=Extra&only_with_tag=CURRENT Didn't mean to pick out Dan there, just knew that one offhand ;) But looking at the last cvs commit seems like the "correct" way to find the current maintainer at the moment. Scott

On 10/16/07, Mateusz Jedrasik wrote:

Tuesday 16 of October 2007 18:46:41 Dan McGee napisał(a):

...

Wow, I completely forgot about the packager field already there. Good call.

-Dan

Perhaphs the packager field could be updated automatically on upload, depending on whoever uploads the file. I reckon it's a safe bet that whoever uploads, packs?

This is pulled from makepkg.conf, and built into the package. I don't think modifying packages after they are built is a wise idea. To Scott: I guess I'm missing your point here. What is wrong with contacting the last packager with any problems? -Dan

On 10/16/07, Aaron Griffin wrote:

On 10/16/07, Dan McGee wrote:

...

To Scott: I guess I'm missing your point here. What is wrong with contacting the last packager with any problems?

This was going to be my point. Regardless of maintainer, whoever built the last package should be responsible for the working state of it.

I was making the same point that Mateusz Jędrasik made while I was typing my response. I didn't realize it was an automated process. Yes, I absolutely agree that the last uploader should be considered the packager, that was exactly what I was trying to get across too. It would be good if the website showed "packager" instead of, or in addition to, "maintainer" in the package info listing, since that is the person we'd be apt to contact. (To be honest, I dislike the subtle distinction..) Scott