Recipe maintainer-ship and distro_tracking_fields.inc

Yocto Project Contributors,

Please review and comment on this.

As we we move forward, we are trying to keep track of who is maintaining the recipes and what version tracking is, as not all upstream information can be tracked automatically, so we have been using a distro_tracking_fields.inc file located in meta/conf/distro/include.

This file is used not only for tracking version information, but also by the Package Database (http://packages.yoctoproject.org), so that people that use the Yocto Project they can see License and Version information via a web interface.

We will also use it to generate reminder emails as upstream packages are updated to update the recipes (if appropriate) or mark in the distro_track_fields.inc file that it should not be updated. By keeping the RECIPE_MAINTAINER information current, this will help to improve the quality and currentness of core recipe meta-data.

From time to time recipe ownership changes, if you are interested in contributing to the Yocto Project recipes as part of core or other layers, then please take a look at the who the current maintainer is and let them know you would like to help. When you do that and the current owner replies, please update the distro_tracking_fields.inc with your name as RECIPE_MAINTAINER.

As the Yocto Project wants to keep the to the most current stable release of the upstream projects, the maintainers will receive email during the development milestones reminding them to update their recipes as appropriate. This will also be tracked by the core maintainers, if a recipe is not updated in a timely manner, the core maintainers may update it directly. If the recipe maintainer is unable to continue updating their recipes beyond 1 release, the core maintainers may choose to re-assign the recipe, so the recipe does not become stale.

http://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Distro_Tracking

    Sau!

Saul Wold
Yocto Component Wrangler @ Intel
Yocto Project / Poky Build System