Ever heard of ‘proxy-maintainer’ before?

January 14, 2010 · Posted in Gentoo

This poped up recently @ -dev ML [1]. It turns out that is little ( or not at all ) documentation about this, which is quite unfortunate since it is one of the most easy and important ways a user can use to assist us on development. A couple of months ago I blogged about Sunrise Overlay[2] as a good way for users to extend their knowledge on ebuild writting and contribute their own ebuilds on an official gentoo overlay. This of course requires a significant amount of time and effort which is hard to find nowadays.
There is another way for you to help us put your shiny ebuilds on portage. You can become proxy-maintainer of any package you like as long as it doesn’t have a Gentoo developer as maintainer.

How does this work?

Since there are no official documentation available, these are the rules you should follow to become proxy-maintainer:

1) Open a bug for your package

2) Attach your ebuild and state that you want to be proxy maintainer for this

3) Assing or CC the bug to the more appropriate herd[3]

4) Wait for a developer to pop up and accept your offer

As proxy-maintainer you should do all the required work to ensure your package is fully working and up2date. This may requires to follow upstream changes and mailing lists and visit occasionally the bugzilla to find out if there are open bugs for your package. This is an excellent opportunity to become an active member of Gentoo developer community and a big step for improving this great distro. Furthermore, you can always jump the gap and become developer[4] if you think you are willing to contribute in regular basis :)

I really hope this post will clarify this “unknown” term and motivate you to become proxy-maintainer :)

[1] http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_8c710130ea7281f9815ef84fdd2216a9.xml

[2]http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org/?p=385

[3]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/metastructure/herds/herds.xml

[4]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2

Tags: Gentoo, overlay, proxy-maintainer, sunrise

Comments

13 Responses to “Ever heard of ‘proxy-maintainer’ before?”

Pavel on January 15th, 2010 2:44 am

Hi,

I proxy-maintain some some 4 or 5 packages in the tree and am preparing to pick up a few more next month. I also didn’t know about this option until I teamed up with Diego Flameeyes Pettenò some 2 months ago. Working with him has been a great experience (thanks Diego) – so I definitely recommend everybody who wants to learn something and improve Gentoo at the same time to pick his favorite dev and ask him for help with this or that unmaintained package. If anybody should want to know more about being a proxy-maintainer from a proxy-maintainer point of view, go ahead and ask me (either here – hope you dont mind Markos, or via gmail.com, under stratil.pavel).

BTW, Diego will probably include information on proxy-maintainership to the devmanual so gentoo should finally get some documentation on this.

Pavel
Pavel on January 15th, 2010 2:53 am

Oh, one more thing: Markos said “… visit occasionally the bugzilla to find out if there are open bugs for your package …”. You don’t really have to if your e-mail address is assigned to the package in its metadata.xml file. In that way you will always receive e-mail whenever a bug for your package is submitted.
Yet another open source blog ;) » Blog Archive » Should we care about the numbers or the quality? on July 11th, 2010 10:33 pm

[...] [2]: proxy-maintainer [...]
Orphaned packages : Yet another open source blog ;) on August 20th, 2010 10:40 pm

[...] work with you :-). If you haven’t heard about proxy maintainers before just take a look here and [...]
An easy way to assist us : Yet another open source blog ;-) on October 29th, 2010 11:17 pm

[...] This means that those packages are seeking for a gentoo developer or a gentoo-user ( acting as proxy-maintainer ) to take care of them and push them on tree or Sunrise. So if you file a bug for a new ebuild, we [...]
Marco Clocchiatti on November 30th, 2010 10:04 pm

wonderfull!
a blog speaking about gentoo proxy-maintainers!

Three months ago, I proposed myself as a proxy mantainer for a few ebuild. I wrote a mail @ Alec Warner (antarus@gentoo.org), as in this official howto:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~antarus/projects/proxy-maint/

and I pubblished this bug:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334809

but I had non answer
I think, I’m waiting for a long time.
How much time is needed to have answer?
Markos on November 30th, 2010 10:40 pm

Why don’t you commit these ebuilds to Sunrise overaly? You can also comment on that bug and ask overlay team to include your overlay to layman.

http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org/2010/03/04/an-easy-way-to-assist-us/
Marco Clocchiatti on December 1st, 2010 10:37 am

thank. I’ll do tomorrow.

anyway, I think that official procedures should work better than personal blogs.
:)
Marco Clocchiatti on December 2nd, 2010 5:03 pm

sorry.
I find some help to irc #gentoo-sunrise, but I have no lucky.

Is there an address where sending an email, instead of using irc?

I don’t understand very well this proxy-maintainer howto:
http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise/wiki/ProxyMaintainer

infact, I’m able to join a metadata.xml file to my ebuild (any of them contains something similar), but I need a place to send it and to have an answer.
Markos on December 2nd, 2010 6:13 pm

You can contact sunrise_at_gentoo_dot_org but the recommended way is to either open one bug per ebuild or commit your ebuild to sunrise. The first option is easy but the second one requires a review from a developer before you can commit your ebuild.

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/sunrise/wiki/HowToCommit
Marco Clocchiatti on December 2nd, 2010 9:31 pm

sorry if I’m using your blog for my problem, but you are the first one who is answering me in some way, and I’m gracefull for this.
I’ve just read your last link, but I’m stopped at the first step:

You need a bug for every ebuild. If there is no bug, file one. Just use Bugzilla.

I’ve just used Bugzilla on this summer, but I had no answer.
May it be my error was to submit an overlay, instead of just one ebuild per bug. But this error was not contested to me, because I simply had no answer.

And that’s not good for a distribution such as gentoo, which depends so strongly from ebuild developers.

Tomorrow, I’ll mail to sunrise_at_gentoo_dot_org.
May you be so nice to assure me any kind of official support?

thanks a lot, from now.
:)
Markos on December 2nd, 2010 9:39 pm

Yes posting an entire overlay is not an ideal way to get the attention you want to. I am in sunrise_at_gentoo_org alias so yes this is the official support you want. I am talking as a developer not as a user in this post :)
I would advice you to use bugzilla instead. One bug per ebuild, then we will guide you through this.
Do not be afraid to use bugzilla. It is the best way to deal with technical problems and proposals.
Grishiomi on March 29th, 2011 10:45 pm

many thanks for the article, I love it