[Nix-dev] Contributing to nixpkgs and maintainers burden

[joachifm at fastmail.fm]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2016, at 07:00 AM, Ruben Astudillo wrote:
> Hi nixers.
> 
> I have a couple of packages (hakuneko, haskell-related) on my local copy
> of the repo. Time to time I've thought of contributing back. But I think
> on the maintainers of nixpkgs and don't know if I am really making them
> favor.
Hi,

In my opinion you should just create pull requests and trust that all
contributors are capable of ignoring things they don't care about (if
not, that's their problem, not yours, IMO). What you can do to speed
things up is explicitly mentioning people you think needs to see the PR,
if the mention bot fails to do so (again, trust that people are able to
manage what they pay attention to). Also, following the guidelines helps
reduce overhead.

As an aside, I find that the discussions about the "github mess" end up
with overly complex solutions that don't really address the core issues
(in my opinion). It'd be a shame if we're actually dissuading would-be
contributors. (Please don't take this as an invitation to start yet
another discussion about this).

Just my 2 NOK.

Regards,
Joachim