NeilM's Sponsorship Checklist

I use this quick checklist to make sure that the package is in a suitable state to be a sponsorship candidate. If a package fails any of these, I'm not going to sponsor it :) However, if a package satisfies these, it doesn't mean I'm gonna sponsor it either. This is just a list of common failure points. Not all developers will want all of these, but I do :)

Musts

  1. dh_* lines in debian/rules
  2. ITP for new packages
    Your package must have an ITP filed for at least a week before I'll upload it.
  3. Builds properly in-a-sane-way
    I use dpkg-buildpackage, and expect the source package to throw out a nice .deb and .changes at the end.
  4. No spurious changes to .orig.tar.gz
    Dont' remake upstreams .tar.gz, unless there is a very good reason.
  5. lintian / linda clean
    It MUST be lintian/linda clean. If it's not, you should have an override in place. And when you email me, tell me why you've overridden it.
  6. Build on Sid
    Your package must build under Sid, or a sid chroot. See pbuilder. Packages built under stable or testing aren't going to work in the Debian repository. It doesn't work like that.

Shoulds

  1. CDBS
    I don't like it, and you're best off finding a sponsor who does. I'll begrudgingly do a one-time-upload though.
  2. Things I have no idea about
    This includes things like KDE, haskell, emacs and python libraries. I don't use them, and don't want to. However, if I can test it, and it works, I'll do a one-time-upload.
  3. IRC
    Similarly, if I say I'll do something on IRC, I won't. I need an email before I'll do it. Most of my IRCing is at work, and I can't upload things from here. I can build them, and use ssh, but that's it.
  4. Good sources
    Please, give me a wgettable url to your .dsc, your .diff.gz and your .orig.gz, or provide an apt-source repository. Don't put ALL your debian packages in one directory, it just makes it harder to find the ones you want sponsoring.