[openstack-dev] The end of OpenStack packages in Debian?

Clint Byrum clint at fewbar.com
Sun Feb 19 19:43:45 UTC 2017


Excerpts from Thomas Goirand's message of 2017-02-19 00:58:01 +0100:
> On 02/18/2017 07:59 AM, Clint Byrum wrote:
> > Indeed, DPMT uses all the worst choices for maintaining most of the
> > python module packages in Debian. However, something will need to be
> > done to spread the load of maintaining the essential libraries, and the
> > usual answer to that for Python libraries is DPMT.
> 
> I wish the Python team was more like the Perl one, who really is a well
> functioning with a strong team spirit and commitment, with a sense of
> collective responsibility. It's far from being the case in the DPMT.
> 
> Moving packages to the DPMT will not magically get you new maintainers.
> Even within the team, there's unfortunately *a lot* of strong package
> ownership.
> 

Whatever the issues are with that team, there's a _mountain_ of packages
to maintain, and only one team whose charter is to maintain python
modules. So we're going to have to deal with the shortcomings of that
relationship, or find more OpenStack specific maintainers.

My main concern is making sure Debian users can interact with OpenStack.
It's truly unfortunate that we may not have OpenStack's core kept well
maintained in Debian (though I can't see any reason Ubuntu's developers
wouldn't help with that -- feel free to chime in Ubuntu folks). But it's
vital to OpenStack and Debian's interests that Debian users be able
to grab the pieces of the OpenStack SDK that they need to communicate
with OpenStack clouds. It's also important that the generic libraries
we maintain, like stevedore, remain up to date in Debian so they don't
fall out of favor with users. Nothing kills a library like old versions
breaking apps.

I'm not going to rush off and do anything now. I don't have time. But
it's now on my radar, and when I find a window for it to fall into, I'll
start looking at how best to transition these. In the mean time I'll
hold out hope that we'll have good news and you can continue your work.



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