Ask MOTU
Q: I want to maintain a package, what do I need to do as the maintainer?
A: Quoting from UbuntuDevelopment/FAQ:
- You will take care of the package’s bugs. It makes sense if you are bug contact for that package in Launchpad.
- You will liaise with upstream.
- You track what’s going on upstream.
- You will try to build a good communication to the upstream developers.
- You will find out how to fix bugs appropriately. Uploading new upstream versions is just not enough. (Think of fixes in stable releases.)
While this might sound a bit intimidating, it’s big fun and you get to know a lot of people: users, upstream authors, maintainers in other distributions, and so on.
Q: Somebody told me that I need to set XSBC-Original-Maintainer, what does that mean?
A: Take a look at DebianMaintainerField - our friends at Debian decided that we should clarify who is listed in the Maintainer field of the source package, but still preserve the original maintainer. The update-maintainer script (in the ubuntu-dev-tools package) automates that process.
Q: Our changes in <some Ubuntu package> were accepted in Debian, how can we get their package?
A: For that we file a sync request. Syncing means: we pull the latest source package from Debian and build it against our archive. This step means that all Ubuntu changes are overwritten. SyncRequestProcess explains how to get it done.