/*
This is a slightly redacted version of the notes taken during the BoF
at DebConf25, by emollier -- thanks!
Original: https://gobby.debian.org/export/debconf25/bof/pkg-perl


Cheers,
gregor
*/

Background
==========

https://debconf25.debconf.org/talks/40-use-perl-almost-annual-meeting-of-the-debian-perl-group/

use Perl; # Almost annual meeting of the Debian Perl Group

Room: BoF room (B03-035)
Time: Jul 14 (Mon): 16:30 CEST = 14:30 UTC
Duration: 0:45

Intro, part 1: Organisation
===========================

Welcome people.

- Who takes notes? We're using Gobby: gobby.debian.org/debconf23/bof/pkg-perl A: emollier


Intro, part 2: Welcome, who's here?
===================================

Introduce yourself if you like!


Intro: Agenda
=============

Anything to add to/scratch from the agenda? Order of topics?

No changes to the agenda.

Team status
===========

Statistics
----------

https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianPerlGroup/Statistics

* Members/committers
* LHF sessions
* New members

Discussion of the general situation.
Is it sustainable?
If not, for today we can focus on identifying and naming problems.

Reviewing through the statistics page.
Decline between 2021 and 2022, then activity is constant.
Number of contributors with more than 100 commits evolves
somewhat randomly.

LHF: gather the team on tasks which are boring.
2021 had 11 unique pariticipants, but number dropped.
Most consistent people were emollier, gregoa, otherwise
people went usually once.
fsfs: managed to take only a couple, thinks it's a pity but is a
fact.

Robert Lacroix: found difficult to recruit people with perl
experience. People are now comfortable with python, not perl.
Reflected by the activity in the Debian Perl team.
There were about two people appearing on average per year,
usually not really active after joining.

tchet: there are one off contributors often, and may
disappear afterward.

gregoa: still doing good with maintaining packages.
Problem is the activity level of members going down.

Q: popcon numbers showing users also going down on Perl and
Perl modules?
A: Perl is lintian and debhelper. People use these tools and
transitively Perl, skewing some numbers. Some initiatives
exist to replace the language in use (Rust, Python).


Future of LHF?
--------------

Question to those who attended LHF sessions in the last year or so:
Are LHF still giving us more benefits than problems?

If we keep LHF:
Current date + time: 17:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC alternatively
Is the current timeslot very problematic for some people who would like to attend?

fsfs: thumbs up
nodens: not much participation in the last year,
but a good way back in. Hoping to attend sessions when
possible. Might need better timing but targeting the
4 or 5 attendances.
fsfs: same here. Reminder is useful.
gregoa: no cost to keep it, might as well keep it up.
emollier: nothing more to add. :)


Info: Perl 5.40/5.42
====================

5.40.1 in unstable and testing, waiting for the trixie release.
5.42 has been released upstream recently.


Git branch names
================

* DEP-14
* BoF 2021: we should be consistent across packages,
and if we change, this needs coordination and probably helpers
(remote repos, local repos, tools, …) and an "owner"
* BoF 2022:
Decided: it is "debian/latest"
AI: dam is going to "drive" the effort
* Since then: some notes and research,
https://gobby.debian.org/export/Teams/Perl/new-branch-layout
+ `dep-14-convert-git-branch-names' in devscripts
fails with libwiki-toolkit-plugin-diff-perl (only 1 commit on upstream and the first one?)
fails with libmemory-usage-perl (the same)
+ gbp-pull _might_ get a feature (branch exisits) to handle renames of upstream to upstream/latest:
https://salsa.debian.org/agx/git-buildpackage/-/merge_requests/53

→ plan (who what when)

Q: everyone happy about the change?
A: no objections

nodens: happy to give a hand
gregoa: cool, don't want to do this alone
emollier: suitable lhf target?
nodens: need to determine how to proceed and whether it makes
sense.


upstream-repo -> upstreamvcs
============================

There are 'upstreamvcs' branches in meta.git and pkg-perl-tools.git.
Good to merge?

gregoa: there looks to be convergence to a new trend.
implemented dpt subcommands to proceed to the conversion.
It would be nice some people have a look at it to play around.
There might be some bugs still hiding in the shadows.

emollier: might have some time next week to try that out.
[already happened, thanks!]


Info: uscan / MetaCPAN
======================

MetaCPAN banning crawlers also hit uscan.
Solved for the time being; yadd has ideas for improving uscan
[Update: uscan improvements exists: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/devscripts/-/merge_requests/520
]


Sprints
=======

No recent sprints.
Do we want sprints? If yes, when and where? Specific topics?
There will be a MiniDebConf in Hamburg in 2026 (4 May - 11 May)

Last one was like Hamburg 2022 or 2023.
gregoa: was rather productive.
Thoughts?

nodens: might be able to attend if there is something else,
so Minidebconf would facilitate things.
not making promises.


---

[the "owl" dropped off the bus a short while
announcing end of BoF apparently :]

---

Tooling for inactive group members
==================================

Existed when we used Alioth, has been discussed a few time since then without any results --> remove from TODO list?


Salsa CI
========

Current status: no shared approach, some people/package use it, others don't. Continue like this or common policy?


Any other business?
===================

--
.''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org
: :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06
`. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe
`-

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Hi,

Tooling for inactive group members
==================================

Existed when we used Alioth, has been discussed a few time since
then without any results --> remove from TODO list?

Just a couple of days ago I realized that gitlab shows the last
activity date on the members list of any group or project, so

https://salsa.debian.org/groups/perl-team/modules/-/group_members?with_inherited_permissions=exclude&sort=oldest_last_activity

shows the list of direct members (i.e. excluding members coming
from debian group) with the oldest last activity first. This date
is for any kind of activity in salsa, not only for the modules
group context, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Using this link as an owner of the modules group, should be easy
to walk through the list of members and remove those that don't
match the minimum amount of activity. For instance, 15 members
out of 127 have no activity since 12.0 was released on June 10th,
2023.

Unfortunately, using the API won't work since last_activity_on
from /users/:id is available to admins only. Web scraping could
work using the data in

<div class="js-group-members-list-app" data-members-data=...>

but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

On the other side, there are direct members that are already
members through the debian group. I'm guessing that those could
be removed and the total amount of 127 direct members would
decrease notoriously. I think many of those memberships were
added when migrating from alioth because we didn't know yet that
groups could become members of other groups too.

Hope this helps!

--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Alex Muntada <[email protected]>
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ Debian Developer 🍥 log.alexm.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀


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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:20:05 +0200, Alex Muntada wrote:

Hi,

Oh, hi, what a pleasant surprise :)

Tooling for inactive group members
==================================

Existed when we used Alioth, has been discussed a few time since
then without any results --> remove from TODO list?

Just a couple of days ago I realized that gitlab shows the last
activity date on the members list of any group or project, so >https://salsa.debian.org/groups/perl-team/modules/-/group_members?with_inherited_permissions=exclude&sort=oldest_last_activity
shows the list of direct members (i.e. excluding members coming
from debian group) with the oldest last activity first. This date
is for any kind of activity in salsa, not only for the modules
group context, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Right; I think I also discussed this with another team member 2 years
ago; and I'm less optimistic than you -- sure this can be a lower
bound (as in: someone who has no activity on salsa in the last N
years obviously hasn't done any commits to pkg-perl as well) but in
the end it doesn't tell use anything about contributions to pkg-perl
(when all activity was somewhere else). But yes, we could remove the no-activity-at-all people.

Using this link as an owner of the modules group, should be easy
to walk through the list of members and remove those that don't
match the minimum amount of activity. For instance, 15 members
out of 127 have no activity since 12.0 was released on June 10th,
2023.

Ok, that sounds good.

Unfortunately, using the API won't work since last_activity_on
from /users/:id is available to admins only.

Salsa admins? I guess so, since we are both "owners" and won't get
any higher :)

Web scraping could
work using the data in
<div class="js-group-members-list-app" data-members-data=...>
but I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

Ack.

On the other side, there are direct members that are already
members through the debian group. I'm guessing that those could
be removed and the total amount of 127 direct members would
decrease notoriously.

Ack.

I think many of those memberships were
added when migrating from alioth because we didn't know yet that
groups could become members of other groups too.

I might also be partially responsible for that -- I seem to remember
that I added DDs explictly, because -- not sure; to make sure they
have all necessary permissions or to make them "real/full" team
members, or something? But yes, that's all a bit murky …

Hope this helps!

Totally, thanks for picking up this topic, and I hope you will
continue to think and work in this area :)


Cheers,
gregor

--
.''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org
: :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06
`. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe
`-

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