maintainers: make email optional

[ncfavier]

Not giving an email address is fine as long as the maintainer is reachable through other means, such as GitHub or Matrix. On the other hand, an @noreply.github.com/@users.noreply.github.com email is useless.

This does not break https://search.nixos.org because we already treat email as optional.

[infinisil]

Suggested change

	'' ++ lib.optional (checkedAttrs.email == null && checkedAttrs.github == null && checkedAttrs.matrix == null) ''
	'' ++ lib.optional (checkedAttrs.email == null && checkedAttrs.matrix == null) ''

There's no way to reach out to arbitrary GitHub users

[ncfavier]

Can't you just @ them?

[ncfavier]

Note that this change would make 62 maintainers invalid.

[infinisil]

You can't reach out to GitHub users privately though (unless I guess you create a private repository, invite the desired users to it, then create an issue and ping them). Also when you see a GitHub users profile and they have no public email address this might be their way of saying that they don't want to be contacted privately.

I guess the question is: Do we want nixpkgs maintainers to be contactable privately? While that would be nice, I don't think it's actually needed. How about just requiring them to have a GitHub account instead, ideally with the requirement that that very GitHub user makes the PR that adds them as a maintainer. Since nixpkgs is entirely public, there shouldn't be a reason to contact people privately. If you have a question regarding a package you can file an issue and ping the maintainers.

[ncfavier]

Do we want nixpkgs maintainers to be contactable privately?

Hell no. We already have a security team for disclosures.

How about just requiring them to have a GitHub account instead

I'm kinda :| on that. Ideally you should be able to submit patches to nixpkgs by email. I guess there's little sense in having only a matrix ID specified though.

[infinisil]

Turns out there's only one person without an associated GitHub account:

nix-repl> :p builtins.filter (attr: ! attr ? github) (builtins.attrValues (import maintainers/maintainer-list.nix))                      
[
  { email = "davide.peressoni@tuta.io"; githubId = 3186857; matrix = "@dpd-:matrix.org"; name = "Davide Peressoni"; }
  { email = "loveisgrief@tuta.io"; keys = [ { fingerprint = "9847 4F48 18C6 4E0A F0C5  3529 E96D 1EDF A053 45EB"; } ]; name = "LoveIsGrief"; }
]

And that looks like it might be a mistake when @LoveIsGrief added themselves in #209769 (there is an obviously associated GitHub account)

While this makes this check here more strict, it wouldn't be a problem because of that

[ghost]

I'm not sure I understand the mistake. The file header says that email and name are required https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/maintainers/maintainer-list.nix#L4 . I followed what it says.

IMO, this PR isn't complete if maintainers-list.nix keep the header with the email+name requirements, if the email is rendered optional.

[ncfavier]

Thanks for pointing that out, that comment should indeed be updated to stay in sync with whatever check we decide to settle on.

Regardless, we should also mention that setting a GitHub ID allows ofborg to request your review automatically when a package you maintain is modified.

[infinisil]

Regardless of the other ideas here, I think this check in this PR is good as is. The only thing to do is to update the comment in the maintainer listing

[rnhmjoj]

Turns out there's only one person without an associated GitHub account:

That's because they have all been removed in #178656

Famously, there was @volth that received a full damnatio memoriae by github but contributed patches using the discourse forum, I think.

[nixos-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/contribute-without-a-github-account/25007/1

[ncfavier]

Rebased on master and updated the comment in maintainers-list.nix

[zowoq]

On the other hand, an @noreply.github.com/@users.noreply.github.com email is useless.

It was useful if I wanted to set an obvious "I'm not contactable by email" email address.

If an email address is given, it should allow people to reach you. If you do not want that, you can just provide github or matrix instead.

Any suggestions on what I should use now so I can restore my repology list and feed?

https://repology.org/projects/?maintainer=59103226%2Bzowoq%40users.noreply.github.com&inrepo=nix_unstable
https://repology.org/maintainer/59103226%2Bzowoq%40users.noreply.github.com/feed-for-repo/nix_unstable

[ncfavier]

Oops, I didn't think of that, sorry. I've opened a PR at repology to also index GitHub accounts. In the meantime, feel free to revert the noreply check and re-add your email.

[ncfavier]

It was useful if I wanted to set an obvious "I'm not contactable by email" email address.

I'd say "no email address at all" is even more obvious.

[zowoq]

I've opened a PR at repology to also index GitHub accounts.

Thanks.

In the meantime, feel free to revert the noreply check and re-add your email.

I can live without it for a bit, I'll give the repology maintainers some time to review at the PR and go from there.

It was useful if I wanted to set an obvious "I'm not contactable by email" email address.

I'd say "no email address at all" is even more obvious.

I don't understand? Email address was a required field prior to this PR?

[ncfavier]

I don't understand? Email address was a required field prior to this PR?

Yes, you're right: it was useful given that requirement, but isn't any more.

[SuperSandro2000]

I can live without it for a bit, I'll give the repology maintainers some time to review at the PR and go from there.

Yeah, lets wait a few days and not hastily revert things. They need to get to nixos-unstable first anyway to be useful.

[ncfavier]

Here you go