Sponsorship Process (Was: Re: Packaging Help)

[Scott Kitterman]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:35:11 -0400 Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Monday 28 September 2009 2:43:49 pm Loïc Martin wrote:
>> Actually, nothing in the documentation tells you there's an added step
>> after hitting "Confirmed" and subscribing the relevant sponsors.
>> However, it's often necessary, and since being obnoxious on #ubuntu-motu
>> is counterproductive, you progressively learn to pick up the bugs you
>> think, and not to much, because that way you can leave a few days
>> between asking on the channel.
>
>Yep yep. Theoretically, subscribing the sponsors is all you have to do. But 
>then we all know the difference between theory and reality.
>
>James has been doing all this stuff on branches and merge requests. What's come 
>of it?  He wrote up some docs on how to make a branch and attach it to a bug 
>and all that.  But it seems many sponsors have no idea what to do when asked 
>"can you sponsor this?" and pointed to a bug with a branch attached.  AFAICT, 
>they have to branch trunk and your branch, then manually bzr merge, then 
>upload.  It makes more sense to me to just have a "Merge!" button on the Merge 
>Request page in LaunchPad (only for people with permissions to merge into that 
>package's branch, that is).  That'd be easier even than debdiffs for the 
>sponsors, I think.
>
Probably, once potential sponsors are familiar with the new workflow, this will be true.  I do not think that it will have a big effect on sponsorship though.  IME, the process of understanding and testing the patch take far more time and mental energy than shoving around bits off diff.

Scott K