[chef] Re: Cookbook maintenance problem

[Sean OMeara < >]

Hi Braulio,

Historically, we haven't used Github pull requests to manage contributions to cookbooks. Instead, we've tracked issues in our JIRA. This was mainly a workflow issue, to ensure that contributions that made it to our review and merge queues have has a CLA signed. 

After the launch of Supermarket, we'll be able to use Github issues directly. It will hel our workflow by adding labels about CLAs to pull requests, so we can tell at a glance if we can accept it. That will greatly improve our contribution process, so PRs won't languish like this.

During the past 6 months, we've been experimenting with diversifying the the Opscode managed cookbooks. This been met with mixed results, but has overall been going well. We're not subject matter experts in most things, so we've been seeking maintainers where appropriate.

Concerning nginx specifically, its on the list for a complete rewrite to address all the issues in one sweep. Because we use it internally, and because of the flat namespace on the community site, we're holding on to it for now. 

We're working hard to get supermarket out the door, so stay tuned.

-s

On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 1:56 PM, Bráulio Bhavamitra < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Hello all,

This subject was already discussed early, but as things really needs
to get better I'm revamping this.

I see that some authors made a lot of cookbooks. Then they cannot
handle and maintain them well. For example, the nginx cookbook, misses
many configuration options and has a long list of pull requests
(https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/nginx/pulls) mostly without any
comments on them.

So for these cookbooks it is necessary to change the maintainers or
add new active and experienced developers to them, don't you think?
How could that be done?

Cookbooks that matches the exact name are really important, so they
need to keep up with the users' needs.

cheers,
bráulio