[Bioc-devel] Package additional maintainers

[Martin Morgan]

On 10/31/2017 04:57 PM, Stephanie M. Gogarten wrote:
> Is this a new policy? Will packages that currently have multiple 
> maintainers be required to remove all but one?
> 
> All three of the packages I maintain have multiple maintainers listed. 
> In two cases, I added a second maintainer to the packages before I went 
> on parental leave, to ensure that someone would be able to respond to 
> issues in a timely manner. In the third case, I took over primary 
> maintenance of a package from its original author, but he would still 
> like to able to submit changes to Bioconductor. In all these cases, I 
> think the ability to have multiple maintainers has improved the 
> reliability of the packages, rather than the reverse.

There are several issues at play here.

Who has git access? More than one person can. To enable that, someone 
currently with git access should send email, cc'ing the person they want 
to extend git access to, to packages at bioconductor.org. This isn't 
necessary or even a good idea in this era of git -- just host your 
repository somewhere else, managing your contributors / co-maintainers 
how you see fit, and have one person designated as 'pushing to bioc'.

What about in the DESCRIPTION file? Yes, the policy is that there is a 
single 'Maintainer' listed, for the reasons that Wolfgang mentions -- we 
contact the maintainer with a problem, the maintainer responds (maybe 
after coordinating with others on their team). As opposed to us sending 
an email to four maintainers, each thinking that the other one will 
handle things, etc.

And then of course there is policy versus practice. The single 
maintainer in the DESCRIPTION field is checked when the package is 
submitted, but not subsequently, so...

Martin

> 
> Stephanie
> 
> On 10/31/17 4:16 AM, Wolfgang Huber wrote:
>> In this matter, Bioconductor follows the CRAN policy:
>> https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/policies.html
>>
>> "The package’s DESCRIPTION file must show both the name and email 
>> address of a single designated maintainer (a person, not a mailing 
>> list)."
>>
>> I understand that the intention for this is to have a single point of 
>> contact for package-related queries from others. This person can then, 
>> of course, delegate the work as they see fit.
>>
>>      Kind regards
>>          Wolfgang
>>
>>
>>
>> 31.10.17 10:45, Fatemehsadat Seyednasrollah scripsit:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I wanted to ask how can I add additional maintainers who can update 
>>> git and consequently the package. I think there should be 
>>> instructions but I could nt find.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Fatemeh
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Bioc-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel
>>>
>>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Bioc-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/bioc-devel


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