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On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote: |
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> On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Nirbheek Chauhan <nirbheek@g.o> wrote: |
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>> Just start removing old[1] maintainer-needed packages. If people |
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>> complain, tell them to start maintaining it. If they continue to |
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>> complain, ignore them. As tree-cleaner, you have the power to do this |
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>> and not take bullshit from people about it. |
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> |
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> The intent of the TreeCleaner project (years ago) was to essentially |
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> look for packages in bugzilla that had lots of bugs and no maintainer. |
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> For a while beandog essentially maintained a site that tracked this |
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> for us (Gentoo Package that need Lovin' was the awesome title.) |
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> |
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> From that list you either fixed the problems and commited them (e.g. |
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> you were a roving package maintainer) or you pmasked it and marked it |
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> for the deadpool. |
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> |
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> There is not much policy on treecleaning a package just because no one |
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> has touched it. Time since last touch was just one of a dozen |
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> indicators used to find packages that are broken (because a package |
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> not touched since 2006 is also not likely to compile.) |
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> |
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Sure, that's the history. But what made sense back then doesn't make |
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sense now. Back then we didn't have 600+ packages that no one |
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maintains, and whose bugs go almost entirely unread. We had crazy |
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amounts of manpower back then. |
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As we evolve, the responsibilities of the different parts of Gentoo |
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also evolve. As such, the tree-cleaners project has evolved, and if |
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the team isn't allowed to clean the tree, then why do we even have it |
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anymore? |
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I really don't understand *why* people want to keep around |
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unmaintained packages. If a package is not maintained, we should come |
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up and say it outright. Trying to maintain the illusion of maintenance |
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is really bad — for each person reporting a bug about a package, 100 |
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people who got that same bug don't report it at all. So what happens |
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when there are just 50 users for some packages? Half the time we won't |
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even know that one of them is broken[1]. The rest of the time, users |
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will get a bad impression of Gentoo saying "Man, half the packages |
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don't even work". |
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It's really simple: |
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(a) If the package has plenty of users, there should be no problems |
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finding a maintainer or a proxy-maintainer. |
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(b) If the package has few users and is high-maintenance, it's either |
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already broken, or will get broken soon without a maintainer. Find one |
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or remove it! |
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(c) If the package has few users and is low-maintenance, package.mask |
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it so we can figure out who the users are, and we can get them to |
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proxy-maintain it, it's so little work anyway, right? |
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(d) If the package has very few or no users, what the hell is it doing |
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unmaintained in the tree? It's just eating up disk inodes and space. |
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We all like to boast about how gentoo has 15,000 packages, but we |
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neglect to mention that more than 1000 of these are either |
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unmaintained or very poorly maintained. And this is a very |
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conservative number. |
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Let's not turn portage into a graveyard for packages. Let's just remove crap. |
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1. Writer is bad at statistics, this is probably inaccurate. |
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-- |
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~Nirbheek Chauhan |
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|
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Gentoo GNOME+Mozilla Team |
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