The maint is dead, Long Live the maint!
Are you a new GNOME user who would like to get bug mails about your favourite application, but don’t know who to ask? Are you a developer who has been waiting for 2 weeks for someone to get around to adding you to a list alias? Are you a sysadmin who is snowed under with work, and has better things to be doing than checking out mysterious CVS modules to add a user to an alias? Then this blog entry is for you…
A subtle, and mostly untrumpeted, change came in with the GNOME Bugzilla upgrade – the ability to watch other users. It is possible to get all the bugzilla mails they get, as well as your own, by simply adding them in your e-mail preferences page.
This has brought about a change in policy for the Bugzilla *-maint mail aliases, which is great news for anyone who has ever waited for days or weeks to be added to one because someone was on holiday, busy or otherwise occupied. Each product (and on request, even modules) can have their own “dummy’ bugzilla account, created by bugzilla-maintainers. This account will be a bit-bucket, rather than a mailing list. And the users who want to “follow” the bugs of a product or module simply add this -maint user to the list of users they are watching.
No more shall you wait for a sysadmin intervention! No more shall new users need to get to know the maintainer to get on a -maint alias! Power to the people!
