I would like to request an ownership transfer of my libxml2-utils snap to Snapcrafters. I’ve contacted the upstream and they are not willing to maintain the snap[1].
Thanks!
[1] Implement Snap Packaging for libxml2 (!5) · Merge Requests · GNOME / libxml2 · GitLab
Are @snapcrafters willing to maintain it?
@popey or @wimpress would it make sense for you guys to have a @snapcrafters group in the forum for this kind of case?
I’m in two minds about this.
I’m appreciative that @Lin-Buo-Ren has both snapped libxml2-utils and offering it to the upstream to maintain.
Ordinarily when rejected by the upstream, someone needs to maintain the snap. Typically in snapcrafters we’ve maintained snaps which are typically high profile, sometimes as a ‘holding pen’ until upstream are ready, or if the existing maintainer no longer wishes to maintain the snap.
I worry that if we take on every snap in snapcrafters, it won’t scale. We’re already keeping on top of the security updates for all the snaps in there, but everyone one we add is another to manage.
It’s certainly a shame that upstream aren’t interested in maintaining this snap. I’ll be honest, anything that starts “lib*” is not really high on the hit-list of ‘interesting things to snap’. So I’m not sure what compelling advantage there is for this snap.
Happy to hear other’s opinions on this.
I’d personally suggest accepting every snap that has passed certain QA criterion to the snapcrafters as it ensures passive maintenance to the snaps(one can at least post a PR that fixes its problem and won’t be facing the trouble that the sole publisher is no longer active to merge it after quick review and do a snap rebuild).
A multi-tier maintenance guarantee and/or an orphan policy might be needed, though.
The xmllint app is an XML linter/formatter, which is useful as a developer tool.
Also, library snaps should be useful in becoming one of the build-snaps as a foundation for building other snaps.
If you’re asking for general opinions…
I’m not entirely familiar with how snapcrafters work, but assuming a snap is adopted by them I assume there is an expectation that the original snap creator will continue to work with the snap and submit pull requests for new versions/other changes. That way they do the work and snapcrafters vet it, which is hopefully not a big burden. If that isn’t the case, maybe it should be.
For reference, that way of working is very similar situation to what happens with docker. There is a free for all on docker hub where anybody can upload images, but there are also official-images which are maintained outside of the docker team, but have to go through the official-images pull request and review process to get included/updated. I quite like that model.
Final thought - the “Join Snapcrafters” post is a call to… join snapcrafters in snapping applications according to the rules set out. No surprise that some people will follow those instructions. Perhaps the that post and/or the fork-and-rename-me repository should have a section on what is considered to be a snap that might be considered for adoption, or a suggestion that the person doing the snapping should have a discussion about whether it might be adopted first.
