[Slackbuilds-users] Script submission technicality

[B. Watson]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2025, fsLeg wrote:

> I just realized something. Anyone can submit a SlackBuild. There's no 
> authorization, no checks who actually submits it, and even Submission 
> Guidelines don't mention anything about who can submit SlackBuilds. Even 
> existing ones. So while it would be a good courtesy to notify some script's 
> author that a new version came out or there's a bug in their script, you 
> could just fix it yourself and submit it without changing author and 
> maintainer fields. If it's a good-willed change, you just specify your own 
> email when submitting a tarball. If you're slightly less good-willed, but 
> still want the SlackBuild to just work, you can specify the maintainer's 
> email, and it doesn't even matter since it seems that nothing is actually 
> emailed when you submit a script.

Well, there's the email with the removal code. Gets sent to the email
you enter in the submission form. If you put the original maintainer's
address there, he'll get that email and go "wait, I didn't submit an
update for this".

> So does it mean that it's actually OK to submit updates, fixes and changes to 
> existing SlackBuilds yourself if their maintainers don't do it in reasonable 
> time? At what point would that be considered a takeover? Or is this just an 
> oversight in the guidelines?

It's not OK to update others' SlackBuilds. We don't have any technical
measures in place to prevent it, we rely on people being honest. Maybe
in the long run that won't work out, but so far it's been OK.

> And side question, since I mentioned a takeover.  I emailed maintainers of 
> two SlackBuilds and asked them to update their scripts, but got no response 
> in two weeks by now. How long should I wait before asking here to take over 
> their SlackBuilds?

If it's been two weeks, please ask the list. There are some
maintainers who changed their email addresses and forgot to update
their .info files, but who still subscribe to the list with their new
addresses. Do that, and if you don't get a response to the list mail
within a week, the builds are yours to take over.

Another thing to check: clone the git repo and search the git log for
the maintainer's name and/or email, e.g.:

git log --author="Joe Blow"

The results will be most-recent first. If you see that the maintainer
hasn't done anything in a long time (like, years), you can assume that
maintainer's abandoned his builds. That's not always the case, e.g.
someone changed their 'maintainer name' and forgot to update one of
his builds, or someone maintains only one build and it hasn't been
updated upstream in years, but it's at least a data item. If you see
lots of recent activity from the maintainer, you can assume his builds
are *not* up for grabs.