requesting for changes to be sent to debian before sponsoring an upload

[Emmet Hikory]

Sebastien Bacher wrote:
> Everybody will agree that sending changes to Debian is good thing, we
> still have many packages that could be in sync but are not though
<...>
> I don't want to point anybody there, but that's typically the sort of
> change which should have been sent directly to Debian so we could have
> this package in sync again
>
> The issue is partially an educational one and that's why I would like to
> suggest to change the sponsoring policy to request to have changes which
> make sense for Debian sent to the bts (and bonus points if you send
> those upstream and tag the distribution patches too) before sponsoring
> an upload, this way we don't create delta and contributors learn that
> sending changes to debian and upstream is useful
>
> What do other people think about the idea?

    From watching traffic in #ubuntu-motu, it seems like prior to DIF,
there is often pressure on those who would be performing merges to
work with Debian to create a sync, rather than merging, and a number
of sponsors who don't like to upload without references to bugs in the
BTS.

    I'd like to encourage this practice of having the mergers push the
changes to Debian, rather than it being a sponsor responsibility
(although no reason that sponsors oughtn't also review, encourage, and
possible perform the action if they so desire).  The reason for this
is that most active sponsors do so in a somewhat batch-processing
mode, and reviewing the changes to determine if the issue affects the
package in Debian and if so, in what manner adds to this burden,
further slowing the often overcrowded sponsoring queue.

> Other small note about sponsoring, is there any document or tool which
> contributors are user to send sponsoring request for the merges they do?

    You are likely looking for requestsync from ubuntu-dev-tools.
While not every merge submitted for sponsoring uses this tool, the
remainder use a similar format for the report.

> The title should be updated to reflect that the work has been done and
> that sponsoring is required because the current title doesn't really
> suggest that and can be confusing

    I always measure whether sponsoring is required by the subscribers
of the bug, rather than the title.  Given the interface involved, I'm
not in favor of adjusting bug titles as a given bug goes in and out of
the sponsors queue (while awaiting feedback from the submitter).  It's
an awkward extra step to take (when there are already so many of
those), is duplicate to the sponsor subscription in terms of
information, and makes it more difficult to collect multiple related
bugmail by sorting on subject.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY