What about pulling changes from downstream ?

What about pulling changes from downstream ?

Posted Apr 11, 2008 0:22 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: What about pulling changes from downstream ? by lacostej
Parent article: OpenSSH bug falls through the cracks

I think it's less work for a downstream maintainer to send an email to the upstream maintainer than to maintain the patch in such a way that "pull" works. And looking at the total effort by everyone, I'm sure the email is considerably less work. But probably less reliable.

I sometimes get pointed to lists of downstream patches for packages I maintain. I find it very hard to glean defect information from them. One of the reasons is the open source tradition of not documenting beyond the code itself. It often takes quite a bit of effort to figure out what the point of a patch is. OTOH, when people email me patches, they almost always include a nice explanation.

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It's not a lot of work to send an email, but it's easy to forget.