MuseScore

Thomas, everybody,

On 12 August 2011 07:45, Thomas Bonte <thomas.bonte@...> wrote:
> MuseScore 1.1 is now available for PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Fedora, OpenSuse,
> but we miss Ubuntu and Debian.

I apologise that I've been AWOL recently: during university term and
for the last few weeks, I've been rather ill, and so most of my other
commitments have faltered, including my academic work. I'm almost
recovered now, and I would like to continue maintaining MuseScore.
When I get a chance - I've almost got all my other commitments up to
date, so let's say this weekend - I will build a package for 1.1 and
apply for a Freeze exception. I'll also try and get the trunk
prerelease builds going again.

I'm sorry that this backlog and disappearance have happened, and I
should have kept you all informed; really, I was trying to continue on
as normal, even when I didn't particularly have the strength. In any
case, I enjoy looking after MuseScore, and hope to continue to be able
to do so. That said, if anybody does want to help in the
maintainership, I would be glad to show them the ropes. Of course,
this is open source, so anyone capable is free to send me patches and
suggestions, or - in cases of my absence - have those patches and
suggestions built and uploaded themselves.

Best wishes,

-- 
Toby Smithe
Debian Maintainer
http://launchpad.net/~tsmithe

Hi Toby,

No need to apologize. Glad to hear you are still ok. I hope we can find you
a good co-maintainer to share a little bit of the load.
There is a discussion going on here http://musescore.org/en/node/11786 but I
think I'll also do a call via Twitter & Facebook to find someone to help.

Have a great weekend!

--
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Sent from the MuseScore Developer mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Hi Thomas,

On 12 August 2011 16:30, Thomas Bonte <thomas.bonte@...> wrote:
> No need to apologize. Glad to hear you are still ok. I hope we can find you
> a good co-maintainer to share a little bit of the load.
> There is a discussion going on here http://musescore.org/en/node/11786 but I
> think I'll also do a call via Twitter & Facebook to find someone to help.

I would gladly accept help, but there are two things to bear in mind:

1. The process of maintainership is not hard, and certainly not one I
cannot complete alone. In most cases, it is fairly simple, and the
extra burden of coordination would probably make life harder. That
said, I am always clear that this is open source, and if anyone wants
to produce a package or a patch when I am unable, they should feel
more than free to do so.

2. Whilst maintainership is not hard, I get the impression that a lot
of people think it is easier than it actually is. Technically, it is
not *cognitively* difficult. The main difficulties arise from
awareness of the necessary nuances and practices involved in producing
a decent Debian package. See [1] for a simplified explanation of the
process I use to update the package. I say there that it is "fairly
easy", and I mean it: most people would probably claim that 9 steps do
not constitute "easy", but I would contend that those steps are, in
actuality, pretty mechanical. On the other hand, to make sure the
package is as good as possible, a good amount of attention to detail
is needed; today, for example, I had to spend a fair amount of time
getting to know the code in exportxml.cpp, because GCC 4.6 is stricter
in dealing with casting (I'll file a bug with a patch about this
tomorrow). Because of this, and because I do not have the time nor the
will to dedicate myself to producing documentation or to educating
potential co-maintainers, I would just warn people that I have fairly
high standards ;)

[1] http://musescore.org/en/node/11786#comment-40804

Best,

-- 
Toby Smithe
Debian Maintainer
http://launchpad.net/~tsmithe