Upload, sponsorship and acceptance/rejection emails

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, May 20, 2025 at 09:10:09PM +0100, Arif Ali wrote:
>Currently when a package is sponsored and then uploaded to the unapproved
>queue, only the sponsor gets an email, but the uploader/changer/sponsoree
>is not notified. The sponsor doesn't have to update the LP bug that this
>has been sponsored, although they should.
>
>If a package is rejected (or other state other than being sponsored), the
>sponsor gets an email but the person who originally submitted the package
>doesn't. The SRU Team member either contacts the person on Matrix or
>updates the LP bug, but on some occasions this doesn't also happen.
>
>I suspect that the email that does go to people, there is a "Changed-by"
>(similar to the one that Debian sees as well); maybe this can be used as a
>field as well as a CC so that both the sponsor and the sponsoree gets any
>updates.
>
>I think this could help to speed up the process, if there are any changes
>required by the uploader, this can therefore be actioned a lot quicker.

The problem here is with unwanted email going to people who wouldn't 
appreciate it.

In your workflow, the person in Changed-By is the person who's really 
requesting the upload: they just have to go through a sponsor.  I agree 
that it does seem as though it would be best to notify both people in 
that case.

However, for example, consider the case where somebody takes a Debian 
package and "fake-syncs" it to Ubuntu rather than using the "copy 
package" facility built into Launchpad; this is necessary from time to 
time for various reasons.  That looks exactly the same to Launchpad: the 
person in Changed-By is the person who uploaded the package to Debian, 
but the signer is the person uploading it to Ubuntu.  In that case, the 
person who uploaded the package to Debian should _not_ be notified, even 
if they happen to have a Launchpad account (as many Debian developers do 
for one reason or another).

This sort of edge case is why this is tricky; and in the past some 
Debian developers have got rightly annoyed about what from their 
perspective is unwanted noise from Launchpad, which IIRC is why 
Launchpad doesn't email the person in the Changed-By field unless they 
have upload permissions to Ubuntu.  It's a tricky situation involving a 
compromise between several different requirements, and I don't have a 
better solution.

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]