Tales from the Gryphon

I have long been interested in moving the debian-policy package away from CVS, but had never quite managed to gather enough motivation to do the switch. Debian policy has long had an Alioth project, but I finally managed to file a support ticket, and nag Wichert into creating the arch project for policy.

The first step was to convert the CVS version into an arch repository, and this is where cscvs comes in. cscvs is nice, but I am told that Canonical has a better, private version, and helpful folks there offered to do a managed conversion to arch for me using these cutting edge tools. I declined, being persnickety enough to want to convert Debian technical policy using tools in Debian itself. And, apart from two change-sets (numbers 117 and 125), cscvs managed to do the conversion to arch (the bazaar flavour) nicely on its own (well, after a few false starts as I climbed the learning curve). Came to 283 change-sets. Have a look at my Debian policy branch. It can be registered at http://arch.debian.org/arch/private/srivasta/archive-etch/.

The next step was to create a baz archive on arch.debian.org, and use Clint’s ACL recipe to allow people in the dbnpolicy group to have write access. And then, since I wanted this branch to also have the full set of distinct patch logs, I cycled through all 286 patches in my local branch, replayed and committed them into the remote branch one by one. You may browse the public, or release, branch as well. This version can be registered at http://arch.debian.org/arch/dbnpolicy/etch/.

I have been thinking about informally going through NM (perhaps with an AM who wants some practice) for a while now (and have been procrastinating about it like many real-life DD candidates :-). I have planned on using Devotee (DEbian VOTe EnginE) as the package I use to get through NM. So, pursuant to packaging Devotee, I am trying to add a test suite to the package. In order to run a decent test, I need a set of ballots — signed ballots — at least some of which are signed by keys in the Debian key-ring. I have put together a dummy vote on my own box, with the topic being voted upon being What is your favorite color of the rainbow?. Here is the ballot. Please note that any emailed ballot is likely to end up in a GPL’d package, open for all the world to see, so please consider that before voting. Oh, and the interesting stats are here.

So, why am I embarking on this strange course of going through NM even though I am already a Debian developer? Well, I’ve been in the project since well before there was a new maintainer process. I just felt like contributing, and, one day, just emailed the devel list, and I was in. No checks, no key signatures required (not even a key was needed, unless my memory is failing me). I have a theoretical knowledge of what NM entails, but no real gut feeling for what the various stages feel like, nor how hard they are to get through.

I have always wanted to contribute to the NM effort, but I have never felt comfortable with trying to change — or even participate as an account manager — with so little understanding of what an applicant is going through.

One of the concerns with me trying to go through NM is that I would be taking valuable resources away from the list of real candidates who are stuck in the queue, and mostly for my own selfish reasons. However, I have been assured by current AM’s that adding another candidate to their list would not significantly alter their workload, so I have decided to proceed.

So please, do help develop a test suite for Devotee by voting for your favorite color. Pretty soon I shall be looking for a sponsor for Devotee, and an advocate.