I didn't see any real answers to this, so I'll give it a shot... On Sun, Dec 24, 2006 at 07:18:08PM -0500, Michael Tiemann wrote: > I'd like to see somebody who is maintaining at least 30, and perhaps > 50 packages explain how *they* do it. Maybe they have a better way. > Maybe it drives them almost as crazy Eric. How *does* a maintainer of > 36 packages would with the Fedora process? How *should* one do it? > This is the question and the problem to be solved. I maintain a bunch (98 at the moment) of perl-related packages. Three things make the perl packages easy to maintain: * CPAN has enough metadata to figure out if something needs an update, and, if so, where to get it. * The perl packages mostly follow a clear template. * The majority of those packages run "make test", so, generally speaking, if the package builds, it works. I have a script called cpancheck (an older version is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/UsefulScripts) that I use to find any of the perl packages that need to be updated. If any packages need to be updated, I use cpanspec (in Extras) to download the latest source and generate a new spec for each. I use a script called bump (not on Extras/UsefulScripts, but probably should be) to update EVR of the spec in CVS, add a new changelog entry, and do some repetitive cleanup. I then diff the output of cpanspec with the updated spec in CVS to make sure there aren't any necessary changes in BuildRequires and such. (I try really hard to make the spec match cpanspec output, either by changing the spec or cpanspec, to make this easier.) At that point, all that's left is a test build and rpmlint check (which, admittedly, sometimes I skip if I'm just building in the development branch) before I "cvs commit && make tag && make plague". I don't have all this as automated as I could yet, mostly because I just haven't spent the time to script it all out yet. I'll probably get everything done just in time for the whole process to change. :-) For the non-perl packages, I basically only mess with them when I am told about an upgrade (either through whatever mailing list or a user letting me know in Bugzilla) or when we're doing mass rebuilds shortly before a new release. Even given that, I probably spend more time on the dozen or so non-perl packages that I maintain than I do on all of the perl packages combined. Steve -- Steven Pritchard - K&S Pritchard Enterprises, Inc. Email: steve@xxxxxxxxx http://www.kspei.com/ Phone: (618)398-3000 Mobile: (618)567-7320 -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
