Do you monitor your Python packages in inux distributions?

[Philip Semanchuk]

On Mar 12, 2011, at 2:26 PM, skip at pobox.com wrote:

> 
> I'm one of the SpamBayes developers and in a half-assed way try to keep
> track of SB dribbles on the net via a saved Google search.  About a month
> ago I got a hit on an Ubuntu bug tracker about a SpamBayes bug.  As it turns
> out, Ubuntu distributes an outdated (read: no longer maintained) version of
> SpamBayes.  The bug had been fixed over three years ago in the current
> version.  Had I known this I could probably have saved them some trouble, at
> least by suggesting that they upgrade.
> 
> I have a question for you people who develop and maintain Python-based
> packages.  How closely, if at all, do you monitor the bug trackers of Linux
> distributions (or Linux-like packaging systems like MacPorts) for activity
> related to your packages?  How do you encourage such projects to push bug
> reports and/or fixes upstream to you?  What tools are out there to discover
> which Linux distributions have SpamBayes packages?  (I know about
> rpmfind.net, but there must be other similar sites by now.)

Hi Skip,
I use google alerts to track where my packages posix_ipc and sysv_ipc get mentioned, and they have been turned into packages for Fedora and I think one other distro the name of which escapes me at the moment. At first I was really pleased to see them made into distro-specific packages because I'm too lazy to do it myself. But then I realized the same side effect that you described -- the versions distributed via my Web site have moved on and added bug fixes and major features like Python 3 support, while the distro-specific packages are frozen in time.


I guess via my Google alerts I would learn if a bug was filed against one of my outdated packages. I only get 1-2 alerts per day, so they're easy to keep track of. If my packages were more popular, I might get so many alerts I'd just stop reading them. So far I've never seen a distro-specific bug reported against one of my packages. All bugs have been reported directly to me. I hope that continues to be the case because I don't have a good solution to the problems you mentioned.

Cheers
Philip